


what comes after certainty

by deadlybride



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Case Fic, M/M, Mutual Pining, Season/Series 14, past relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:28:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26436436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: After getting Dean free from Michael--after everything--Sam wants some time alone with his brother. He finds a case, in a nameless town.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 59
Kudos: 125





	what comes after certainty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlulaSpeaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlulaSpeaks/gifts).



> This was meant to be posted for the SPN Reverse Bang, but I wasn't able to complete it then. Almost a year later, here it is, finished.
> 
> On the canon divergence: this story starts a day or two before 'Don't Go Into The Woods' and takes the place of that episode; canon diverges from there. 
> 
> Title from [What Comes After Certainty](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGajq0nVVBc), by Bill Callahan.
> 
> Thanks so much to nigeltde and to doilycoffin, for their handholding to get me through this; massive apologies to AlulaSpeaks, whose art inspired the story, and who was kind enough to wait.

Sam sometimes thinks of his life in phases. There was the very first phase, a long time ago, when he was a little kid and he was ignorant to just about everything. He doesn't think of that one, much. He doesn't remember much about it, anyway—that time before there were monsters. Then, there were monsters, and that was a different phase. One where he was scared, almost all the time, no matter that he tried to hide it from Dean and from their dad. Dark things lurking around every corner, and it turned out that they weren't just something from his imagination: almost every bad thing he could imagine was true, and there wasn't much, he thought, that was scarier than that. Then came a time when he was angrier than he was scared, and sometimes, now that he's older, that phase makes him sadder than the previous one. He spent so much time just… furious, and bitter at the unfair of it all. Like a lot of kids, really, although when he's feeling generous to himself he can admit that his unfair was more unfair than most. That anger was what pushed him out of his real life into an attempt at an easier one—and that's a phase he looks back on and feels wistful, and even if it was doomed he doesn't discount it. He needed it, then. He wouldn't be who he is now without it.

That's the thing, about an accounting of a life. Every phase, every self, they all add up. The Sam who was the bitchy nitpicker who got an awful aching pleasure out of making Dean angry when they were teenagers, he sits right alongside the Sam who hid in the bathtub with an old pistol and prayed that the sounds he was hearing outside the empty motel room's window were not monsters. The Sam who dreamed of a safe, picket-fence life with Jessica—that Sam isn't negated by the Sam who knelt in the dark and drank the blood of a demon to try to grasp at any kind of power that would make his world different than it was. None of them are washed away by the Sam who curled helpless in a cage with an archangel, who suffered—all kinds of things, things that Sam doesn't think about in the light of day. It doesn't mean they didn't happen. It doesn't mean they don't count.

A few days after his thirtieth birthday, Sam stood in a church with his blood humming celestial, and he _knew_ , then, in a way that he'd never been as certain about anything, that this would be the end of him. He was okay with it, more or less. He had regrets, of course, but he knew that he had done more wrong than good in his life, because the way he accounted wrong had a lot—too much, probably—to do with the look on Dean's face. When Dean appeared in the door of the church Sam couldn't believe it. All this work he'd done, all this misery and pain, it was all to make up for— _that_ , that face, and here it was again. How unfair, he remembers thinking, like he was a ten-year-old kid again. How unfair, that after everything, he was going to be faced with it again right before he died.

He didn't die. Sometimes, even now that it's years later, he dreams of that night. A lot of it's hazy, beyond the fever he suffered all the time back then; his brain was lit up with magic, and it was hard to think past it. He still remembers a few bright moments, though, and foremost among them is Dean, standing there with his heart cracked open. His eyes pinned to Sam's, when Sam that whole year had always felt like Dean was looking away to something better. He remembers telling Dean what he'd confessed, and Dean looking like his heart was breaking, telling him that it wasn't true, that Sam wasn't allowed to believe it was true—that the Sam who had hurt Dean, who had lied to him, who had failed him over and over, that wasn't the Sam that Dean accounted for, when they stood in front of each other. Dean looked at him and he said that Sam was what he wanted. Despite everything, despite how much they'd hurt each other and how much they'd let fester unsaid. Dean wanted Sam, still, and after a year of believing it was otherwise Sam had to figure how to fit that in to what he knew about himself.

Even if what came later was hard—harder, almost, than anything that had come before—Sam never really doubted that again. He wondered, though. When Dean looked at him sometimes, like he was remembering other days. Sometimes even now Dean will touch his shoulder, will grin at Sam, and the light will cast off his eyes in a particular way and it's like the years have disappeared and they're in their twenties again, sure somehow that the world would be theirs for the taking.

Whenever it happens Sam feels outside of himself. It was another day, another time. They held a secret between them, shared—and then they didn't. It isn't that Sam's forgotten—and he would bet his life, not his to give away, that neither has Dean—but it's just one of those things. A phase, maybe, and not one he could regret. One he looks back on sometimes, at night, in his room alone with his fan turning slow and his eyes turned toward the darker past. A phase, and it ended, and life spun on.

Amazing that it does. Sam's squared himself with it, after all these years: life does just spin on, as day after day sinks gold into the horizon. No matter what happens, no matter what regrets or miseries or cautious, aching joys—there's only forward. No one ever gets to go back.

*

Anymore most towns look the same, when they're driving. Used to be, there'd be a lot more weird motels and funky little diners, and stretches of highway that would feel fresh with mystery. New asphalt to roll under the Impala's wheels. Now it all feels like roads well-traveled. Maybe not a surprise, with how long they've been crisscrossing the country. Part of it, too, is that the country's just more the same, now. Homogenized.

"Homo-what?" Dean says, squinting across the bench seat.

Sam waves a hand. "Never mind," he says, as they pass another exit. Lodging: Red Roof Inn, Motel 6. Food: McDonalds, Olive Garden. They fly by, humming just under ninety with the sun still high, not yet starting to slip down the sky behind them, and Sam sighs, stretches his legs out into the footwell as much as he can. "You been to this town?"

"Nope," Dean says. His lips pop on the p. "Never even heard of it. Must be one of those hidden gems they're always talking about on HGTV."

A buzz, from Sam's phone, while he's smiling at the image of Dean settling in for a veg-out session in front of interior decorating. He slides it out of his pocket, checks: _Everything fine Jack and I on way to Nebraska. HE wants to see Carhenge._ Castiel's never quite gotten the hang of texting like a normal person. _Have fun_ , Sam sends back, and when Dean asks what's up Sam says, "Cas and Jack are good," and doesn't elaborate, because it might kill Dean not to be the one to drag Jack to Carhenge. Sam went five times when they were little; Jack can see it once without Dean's overbearing excitement coloring the whole thing for him.

Anyway, Sam's glad, for now, that it's just… them. Things have been weird, lately. Too tense, too much. A roadtrip, them and the car, and a job to do that's clean. People to save and no worlds hanging in the balance. It was almost too much to hope for, until it popped up on his laptop that morning. Another missing person, in the deep forest in Pennsylvania, and it didn't take much research to dredge up a possible case. "Sometimes people get eaten by bears," Dean had said, but his eyes had been bright, and Sam had said, "How often is it actually bears?" and Dean had clapped him on the shoulder, had gone to pack up the car.

Maybe they should've taken Jack along, but—Dean was right, his powers were unpredictable now, and also—them, and the car. The road, even if it wasn't a new one. I-80, cruising east, and Neil Young playing low on the tapedeck, and Dean's focus entirely on the road and finally not on some horrible pounding inside his head. Both of them free, or as free as they ever got. It's been a while. Sam's going to take the opportunity.

"Motel tonight?" Sam says. He's feeling mellow enough, he'd even take a Red Roof Inn, if that's how Dean wants to play it.

Dean shrugs. "Sleep in the car," he says, and that's good with Sam, too. In fact, he thinks, he might get an hour right now, with the sun warming the steel and the engine still humming. He scrunches down, knees mashed up against the glovebox, squirms around so his cheek's on the back of the seat, Dean filling up his view. He looks—good. He looks okay. That's really all Sam's ever looking for. In response Sam gets a look, and a flick to his shoulder. "Don't drool on my upholstery," Dean says.

"Like I'm the one who drools," Sam says, and closes his eyes, and smiles while Dean scoffs outrageousness, and the day spools away.

*

The town really is small, and quaint in its way, though Sam doesn't know if it counts as a gem. Surprisingly isolated, in the over-packed east. On their approach that morning, they passed town after town—more of those identical highway signs—but the turnoff here took them into the national forest, and it's been quiet, all day. Coffee at a gas station, and directions to make sure they had it right, since Google's attempts around here seemed fuzzy—"Oh, yeah," the girl at the counter said, "you have a few more miles to go. But, seriously? There's nothing there."

Dean shrugged, smiling at her. "Everywhere's got something," he said, and rolled his eyes at Sam when he turned around.

Really, though, it doesn't look like she was wrong. They drive slow, through the woods, the forest not pruned that far back from the pavement, and the sun dapples down and only very occasionally will a house peek out of trees, or a turnoff to a long dirt drive. The town itself sits on a slope where the land starts to rise up into what passes for a mountain, out here; the road rolls up through the trees, until they come out into the thinner forest and then, abruptly, civilization, or something close to it. Tiny, though: what little Sam had been able to get off the internet had the population at less than a thousand, and he could see that. A few streets, a few cars around. On the little main drag there are two restaurants, a post office, an antique store that's closed. A bed-and-breakfast, and that's where they've pulled in, and where the little old man who runs the place apologizes for not having internet coverage, and he hopes it's not too much of an inconvenience.

"None at all," Sam says, faking a smile, and over the little man's head Dean pops a grin at him, the shit. Sam shakes his head, and lets the little guy lead them to their room. Predictably floral, a little musty, but a big clear window with a cushioned seat, and two narrow white-railed beds, and they've certainly had worse.

When the man leaves, Dean checks the closet, the bathroom. "You think anyone's ever serial killed someone here?" he says. "Any big death celebrities on your list in middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania?"

Sam sighs, and Dean gives him another smirky look over his shoulder. He's in such a good mood, and it's making Sam want to smile, even if he never wants to encourage Dean's more dumbass jokes. He pops open his laptop, reviews the case files he downloaded. "Okay," he says, and Dean plops down on the other bed with a shrieky creak of springs. "Listen to this," he says, and gets Dean's full attention.

*

The record of missing persons is spotty, and Sam's not even sure how many of them are legit. From home, he was able to get six over the last three years, which seems like more than enough to trigger an official inquiry from someone, but there's always an excuse. A deer hunter, lost. Maybe he killed himself. A teenage boy, last seen hitchhiking. Maybe he found a new life. A wife, a mother, traveling cross-country, and she left her kids in the car and wasn't seen again. Maybe…

No bodies, and nothing found. It's like they just vanished. "Townspeople?" Dean says, and Sam shrugs. There's almost no information about this place, which is, itself, weird enough to cause some suspicion. A thousand people, in the hilly forest, and nothing to do but go into the woods, and it's no wonder some people had accidents, or disappeared. Dean paces the room, drinks a beer, thinks out loud. "Wonder if it's like that town, uh. When we were still looking for Dad, back then. With the scarecrow freaks."

"In Indiana?" Sam says, and Dean points at him. Burkittsville, Sam remembers, after a second. Apples, and Dean tied up like an offering. "Could be," he says, folding away that image. "But, what, so they'd be sacrificing outsiders who came into town? To what?"

Dean shrugs, sips his beer. "And why now?" he says. "I mean, 2016 wasn't a great year for anybody, but even 2016 shouldn't be pushing people to, you know, human sacrifice." His eyes go distant. "Unless it was to bring back Prince." Sam raises his eyebrows, and Dean shrugs. "Hey, don't judge. That little dude could shred."

Sam smiles down at his computer and tries to focus on the data, instead of his brother.

Missing person reports, police records. Names and locations and dates, and pictures alongside them. After this long in his life they feel abstract. The mom was a little plump, red hair dulling toward grey. The deer hunter was tall, thick-bearded, unsmiling in a family photo. Victims without anything to hook Sam to them, other than that they'd died. Now, he knows that there's an afterlife waiting for them, for certain; that they'd go to heaven, or to hell, according to the measure of their lives. No mystery left, there. How they died, that's always the mystery. The bigger mystery, how to stop it happening to more people. How to punish whatever had taken them.

They split up, that afternoon. Dean takes the car, and rolls down the window and says to Sam, "Don't get eaten," smiling, before he drives out to the national park service outpost that looks after the woods. Sam doesn't suit up, doesn't want to look more suspicious and out of place than he usually does—in his jeans and a boringly comfortable jacket he strolls down the main street, looks in the windows. A little hunting store, closed right now. The post office, open. The antiques store, closed. The little restaurant where they'll probably eat all their meals, open, and he pushes open the door with a little tinkling bell to find the place barely occupied. A booth in the back, with two youngish people who blink at him, surprised; a guy in a ball-cap at the three-stool counter. A short-order cook working right there, putting together a burger that smells damn good, and a curly-headed twenty-something who turns around and is obviously shocked at his height before she rallies, and says, "Afternoon, you need a table?"

He gets the table, gets coffee that's not half-bad, gets a club sandwich that kind of is. He wipes his hands of the squishy mayonnaise and talks to the girl, and she tells him all about how she loves it here. It's quiet. "I mean, okay, not a lot happens," she says, shrugging, leaning her hip against the blue vinyl booth, "but I like that. I read, I go birdwatching. It's a nice town."

Sam smiles at her, genuinely kind of charmed. Her nametag has a little robin drawn on it, surprisingly detailed. "Good birdwatching around here?" he says, and then: "You're not worried, going out into the woods?"

She cocks her head. "Worried?" she says, smiling puzzled. "About what?"

He turns his coffee mug around, a drip smearing on the linoleum table. Sam's had a lot of experience watching people in small towns; the puzzlement looks real, as does the smile. "Oh," he says, and makes it casual. "I was just planning some hikes up into the hills, and I heard some people had gotten lost out here. Maybe gone missing?"

She frowns, shrugs. "I think I would've heard," she says, but then the cook rings the bell—Sam doesn't know why, he could turn around and just tell her—and she glances over, and then smiles apology. "Sorry, duty calls. Let me know if you want any birdwatching routes."

"Will do," Sam says, and watches her bring a cheeseburger to the old man who's come in and sat a few tables down, and wonders.

No missing person notices up on the bulletin board in the post office. The tiny grocery store, a mile down the road, has the most basic of goods—barely more stocked than Ladow's, back home, with a population about three times as big as Lebanon to support—and a bored teen cashier, who also loves it here. "It's home," he says, shrugging, and he's got a book out on the counter, not a phone or one of those new handheld game systems, and Sam wonders more. He asks about missing people, makes it casual, gets the same genuine confusion, and by the time he's walked all the way back to the bed and breakfast, Dean's back, and he's shrugging too.

"Park service has nada," he says, tugging out of his tie in their room. Sam sits on the bed, watches him. "It's like the guy didn't even know what I was talking about."

He shrugs out of his suit jacket, is left in the white shirt. Sam's reminded, powerfully and just for a second, of Michael, and then Dean glances at him and it's—right. How it's supposed to be. "Did the ranger live in town?" Sam says, and Dean shakes his head, says, "Nah, not really. He has a cabin up there, but he said he comes down, does his shopping and whatnot. Says we gotta try that diner."

Sam huffs. "You'll like it," he says, and after Dean changes and they go, he's right. Dean gets a burger, a milkshake. No booze, but they've got their own supply back at the room. Sam gets a limp salad, and watches the people who come in. New tables. Curly girl is gone, replaced by an older waitress with iron-grey hair, and she's pleasant enough, though she seems tired. Same response, when they bring up the missing people: "Who went missing?" she says, with real surprise, and some worry, too. "Gol', I hope it wasn't anything bad."

"Us, too," Dean says, giving her the soft worried look he's had perfected so long. "But hey, most of the time, people go missing, they just end up going somewhere else. Probably nothing to worry about."

She sighs, refills Sam's coffee. "Well, let's sure hope so," she says, and when she's gone Dean and Sam look at each other, and when they get back to the room Sam cracks a beer and says, "I believe them. Don't you?"

"We've been snowed before," Dean says, but like he's just saying it to say it. He shakes his head, sits on the bed he claimed. "I don't know. I mean, I guess they were all outsiders, but town this small, you'd think some disappearances in the area would be big news, right?"

"You'd think," Sam says, picking at the label on his beer.

Dean's looking at him. He can tell, even still looking down, and when he lifts his head Dean doesn't turn away. "You tired?" Dean says. Sam shakes his head, and Dean's mouth turns up at one corner. "Me neither."

He's still in his boots, but his jacket's slung over the foot of the bed so he's left in that soft purple-blue plaid he's had so long. His beer's dangling between his always-wide knees, and he thumbs the lip of the bottle for a few seconds, and he's still looking at Sam, and Sam's looking back. Been a long time, feels like. Since he could look at Dean, and not worry about what else might be looking back from behind Dean's eyes. A blink—Dean purses his lips, then smiles for no reason Sam can tell. "Man," he says, soft, and shakes his head, and then reaches over for the remote to turn on the tiny old TV.

Sam sits up straight, feeling like something just passed by his face in the middle of the night but he couldn't catch a glimpse. The TV's got softly fuzzy local channels, crackly standard def, and Dean finds a black-and-white movie. Gregory Peck, and a lady Sam doesn't recognize. "Should've bought popcorn when you were at the store, Sammy," Dean says, swiveling around on the bed. His boots drop off over the white-iron foot with two separate thuds on the floorboards and he stretches out, relaxed. "Mm. Think I could get snack delivery in this town? With that, uh, stoner delivery app."

"Somehow I doubt it," Sam says, and he's chest-sore but in that way of pressing against an old bruise. Ache, not hurt. He's well-familiar with the difference. He fetches his laptop out of his bag and stretches out to match Dean, and opens up his Dropbox of Letters files to read about monsters that might live in deep, damp woods, but he's not paying all that much attention. Dean's in commentary mode, and Sam's job is to scoff and try to get him to shut up, to pay attention to the movie, and to pretend like he doesn't like it. Dean grins at the TV, crinkles deep by his eyes, and Sam sighs, and settles in. It's a good night.

*

In the morning, the diner again, and curly girl is there. She smiles at Sam, and only belatedly at Dean, and Dean gets the high eyebrows and the amused look and Sam rolls his eyes. "No," he says, under his breath, and Dean laughs softly while Sam raises his voice and orders two coffees, eggs, toast.

"Sure thing," she says, a dimple appearing, and Dean's still grinning until Sam kicks his ankle under the cover of their booth.

"Focus," Sam says, and Dean says, "Hey, buddy, you focus on whatever you need to," but he relaxes and gives the waitress a more natural nod when she pours their coffee, and leans in over the map he brought back from the forest service guy.

Hills and woods and creeks. A bigger river, snaking between the hills, back to a little lake. "Ranger says there are caves and dens all over," Dean says, and shrugs when Sam looks at him. "Bears? I don't know. Call up Ranger Smith, maybe Yogi's in town."

Yeah, and a pick-a-nick basket too. Sam feels himself smiling, covers his mouth. Eggs appear in his periphery and Dean says, _awesome_ , under his breath, drags over the pepper and the ketchup, and Sam doesn't look at him because he knows what Dean's face will be. This is Dean when he's happy. Sam doesn't get to see that one that often, but he knows it by heart.

It's a beautiful day, on the sidewalk outside. Crisp cold air but the sun coming down warm, and the clouds over to the north don't look like they'll bring rain. Dean tongues his canine, with an absent-minded sucking noise, and elbows Sam. Sam blinks, unaware he'd been staring. "Check it out," Dean says, and Sam follows his eyes to see a newish SUV parked in front of the post office, and a middle-aged paunchy guy frowning at the façade.

They don't have a real pretext for this one. No badges, no cover story. Dean walks up their side of the street back toward the b&b, and Sam crosses the empty road to go it alone, and he puts on a furrow of confusion and an uncertain smile, and says, "Sir, do you know the way to—" before he's cut off.

"I don't live here," the guy says, rude, before he even looks at Sam. He's surprised the way everyone is, for a second, once he does—looks Sam up, and up, and then frowns more. "You new in town?"

"Just here for some hiking," Sam says, with a shrug, and the guy shakes his head.

"Hiking," he mutters, and snorts. "I've been here three weeks and I can tell you, the hiking is _not_ worth it."

Too much emphasis. Something's raw. Sam frowns, and looks over the guy's head to Dean, standing across the street. He lifts a shoulder, and Dean nods, and Sam says, "Buy you a cup of coffee?" in the way that's worked so many hundreds of times before, and it works again this time. The guy blinks, surprised, but in five minutes they're installed at a table in the town's other restaurant, a miniature Italian place that's open despite having no customers. An old man who might be the owner pours coffee and gives Sam's companion a look under his bushy eyebrows that's approximately the opposite of friendly. Three weeks doesn't seem like it's been enough time to ingratiate himself with the locals.

He gives Sam his name, and Sam gives a fake, on random instinct. "Well, Gary, it's nice to know you," the guy says, and sighs over his coffee. "Tell you what, you're a breath of fresh air. People here, they don't let you in, not for a second."

Sam thinks of the girl at the diner, the boy at the store. "Too bad," he says, neutral and nice. "What are you in town for?"

Slurp of coffee. Sam notices, without wanting to, that he's got very, very yellow teeth. "Well," he says, drawing it out, and then shrugs. "Damn, it's not like it's a secret. Looking for my wife." Sam raises his eyebrows. The guy sees it, nods. "Yes, sir. Missing, they said. Took off with my kids, and left them here practically in the street, and when I called it's like, no one knew what the hell I was talking about. She said she was going to her mother's. Like hell. I think she's just shacked up around here somewhere and no one's got the cojones to get her back home where she belongs."

He says it _co-ho-knees._ Sam remembers the woman's file. The red hair, the sweep of grey starting at the temples. Her eyes tired, even as she smiled with her arms around the shoulders of the two boys. Forty, and she looked older. Looking at her husband, scowling and fat and flicking impatient fingers at the waiter for a refill, Sam wonders if maybe he's not right. Sam would walk into the woods rather than stay married to this guy, too.

It's ten more minutes of vague rudeness and Sam hanging onto his patience before he can escape. Before he goes, he promises to let the guy know if he sees the wife, and the guy shakes his head again. "If you remember," he says, and leans back in his chair like he's suddenly very tired, and Sam gets an entirely unwelcome pang of sympathy, despite everything.

Dean's waiting on a bench outside the still-closed antique store, reading a newspaper. "76ers aren't bad this year," he says, when Sam comes up. He lets the paper collapse on his lap, and lifts a hand as the husband leaves the Italian place. No response, other than a frown, and Dean gives Sam a sidelong look as he sits down. "What, did you spit in his cannoli?"

"I think the world spit in his cannoli," Sam says, watching him slam into the SUV and drive off. He tells Dean what the guy said, and Dean says, "Jeez, with the kids?" but Sam's not focused on that.

"If you remember," he says, rolling it around his head. Across the street a tree, planted between the Italian place and a little shuttered house, is trying to put out new leaves. Sam chews the inside of his lip, watches a squirrel scale the trunk. "No one in town knows what we're talking about."

Dean follows his train of thought, immediately. "What, you think they're getting their memories wiped, or something?" When Sam glances at him he looks skeptical. "They might just all be in on it. Not giving up the town secret to strangers. Wouldn't be the first time we got scammed by a cute waitress."

True, and depressing. Sam rubs his jaw. "I don't think they're lying," he says, but they don't have enough information, either way.

"Small towns and cults, they go together like ice cream and apple pie," Dean says. He nudges his knees into Sam's. "Twenty bucks it's a weird religion."

Sam snorts. "We share money," he says.

"Come on, live a little," Dean says, and his eyes are crinkled at the corners again. "Or I'll do the whole chicken dance, bok-bok thing, right here in the street."

"You're ridiculous," Sam informs him, and then says, "You're on."

Dean claps him on the back. "That's my boy," he says, grinning, and squeezes Sam's shoulder for good measure before he stands up. It's warm, grounding, so there's no reason Sam should feel so turned upside down. "Okay, cult hunting, Pennsylvania edition. I've got a good feeling about this. Where should we start?"

*

They start in the woods. Ordinarily they'd split up, but not now, not this town—they've got a sawn-off each and Dean's stuffed their packs with salt rounds, iron rounds, silver-tipped bullets. There are trails on the map, narrow unwalked things with growth curling up the sides of the path. It's not terribly dense forest, especially with the branches bare and the sun streaming weakly through, but it doesn't take long before they've eased their way down another little hill and it's like civilization winks out, in that instant. On the path a few armlengths in front of him Sam can hear Dean breathing; there's water, somewhere, but it's distant enough that it's just a whisper on the edge of hearing. A squirrel bursts out of a bush and skitters up a trunk and they both flinch, as startled by it as it was by them.

Noon, nearly, when they're out to the apex of the trail, out at the farthest edge of what the park service considers walkable. A rise, the trees thinning out, and a stream cutting the earth below. Dean unshoulders his pack against the rust-flaked rail and fishes out a granola bar for each of them, and then his flask, and then a bag of Fritos.

"Really," Sam says, and Dean shrugs, shoving a few in his mouth. Chili-cheese flavor. In some ways, despite all the years, his brother hasn't changed a bit. He shakes his head, unfolds the much-creased map again and spreads it over the railing.

Dean sucks his thumb clean, wet-sounding. "There, see?"

Sam does: there are trails, here, but there's a blank spot, too. They can see the lay of the land, from this little rise—the hills are just as gentle, the trees just as spread out. No rough terrain, no sudden sign of danger, but all the trails just cut off, and loop back toward the town. Sam chews his lip, tracing the blank spot on the smooth green expanse of national forest, and then looks out over the woods.

"Not seeing any clearings," Dean says. He shades his eyes, looking west. "If people are building creepy human sacrifice cabins, they're on the DL. What's that?"

Sam follows his gaze, and matches it against the map. "Pond, I think," he says, and stands up tall, looks over the top of Dean's head. A space, in the trees, where they thin out—natural, not the sharp man-made holes in the canopy created by human settlement. Dean looks up at him, over his shoulder, and Sam shrugs. "Check it out?"

"I don't like not knowing what we're going after," Dean says, but he's not fretful about it. He pops his neck, absent-minded, looking out over the woods. There's no rush to him, and no pain. It's an almost-physical relief.

Sam doesn't bother responding. There are things he's thought of—if it isn't human, if it's a monster. Without a corpse to work from it's all speculation and he's got contingencies going, stacking likelihoods, figuring out possible strategies and exits. But—Dean's not fretful, and so Sam isn't, either. Not after the year they've had. Dean's right here, calm in his eyes and in his soft mouth and the easy way he glances at Sam, and smiles like it's reflexive. It's okay, now, to take a minute.

Below, the stream's gurgling, a slow and steady flow. Sam leans out over the rusted-out rail—"Don’t fall in, you're too big for me to fish out," Dean says, and Sam rolls his eyes—and watches the water go by. Dark, in the shadow of the trees and hill, but with growth coming up lush around the banks. Sam doesn't recognize most of the plants—their work in the forest is mainly in killing things, not watching them grow—but there's one he actually does, and he frowns.

"Huh," he says, out loud, and Dean responds immediately with _what?_ , but Sam's already ducking under the rail, checking out the lay of the slope. It's steep where the lookout is, but if he comes down at an angle—

"You put the rope in my bag, right?" he says, and Dean says, "Duh, but Sam—" and Sam says, "It's nothing, just—I don't want to take chances—" and Dean says, "Screw _that_ , who said anything about chances—" and Sam wins the argument, of course, and that's how he ends up easing his way down the slope with the rope wrapped around his forearm to keep himself up, the other end wrapped around the base of the railing and Dean's shoulder as a probably-ineffective counterbalance, edging his way down the ridge to the water.

"If you wanted to be a botanist, you shouldn't have picked pre-law," Dean calls down to him. Sam shakes his head, smiles, watches his footing. It's really only about twenty yards down, and the rope doesn't make it all the way; he unties himself, and hooks it to a bush growing out of the slope, and scrambles the rest of the way down with his weight leaned back and his hands getting scraped by the rocks.

"You okay?" Dean calls, and Sam calls back, "I'm fine," shaking his head. Mother hen. The stream's louder down here, the water dark. He frowns, looking around. The day's reasonably bright, the sky cold and blue. Birds should be singing but he can't hear anything over the water. He steps closer, boots crunching in the dead leaves and broken sticks. That plant, the one he recognizes, grows happily and bright green, lush where it shouldn't be. Yucca, in the Pennsylvania woods. He brushes his fingers over one of the sharply pointed leaves and half-expects it to cut, but it seems… normal, as much as it can be, nearly three thousand miles from where it ought to grow.

"Sam!" he gets, and he waves a hand. Something keeps twanging wrong, like a missed note. Warm, by the water, and he rubs the yucca leaf between his fingers and steps closer to the stream, crouching down. It is warm, enough that heat's rising off of it in the cool March day, and it's still dark enough that Sam can't see the stream-bed through it or the reflection of the sky above it, and he frowns, goes to one knee. Reaches out, careful, touches the surface—

 _Sam!_ It arrives in his hindbrain, jolts. He drags in breath, scrambles backwards on his ass and doesn't remember falling. His fingers are numb and he saw, he saw—

"Sam, for god's sake, if you don't—"

"I'm okay," he says, thin, and knows Dean can't hear that. He calls it out again, looking back up over his head to where Dean's leaned out too far over the rail, face frantic. He saw—what? His heart's beating hard enough that he feels nauseous and he scrubs his hand on his jeans, the numbness leaving only slowly. He stretches his fingers, feeling the blood throb back. It didn't feel warm when he touched it.

He climbs back up, careful, both hands on the rope to keep himself upright. When he reaches the top again Dean's hands are on his arms, helping him back over the railing even though he doesn't need help, and then on his shoulders, a rough warm palm on his neck, checking. Dean grounding himself. "Jesus, what was that?"

Sam closes his eyes, feels the sun. "I don't know," he says. What did he see? He can't remember. The water was dark and he touched it, and it had been—terror. Sam knows from terror and it was still bad enough that he's swallowing down acid. Dean's thumb drags against his jaw and he opens his eyes, and Dean's right there, with him, worried because Dean's always worried. Comforting, in its way. Sam takes a deep breath. "Something's wrong with the water."

"You think?" Dean mutters, but he squeezes the side of Sam's neck again before he steps away, starts to coil the rope, and in the cool day Sam doesn't feel as strange.

*

Water. Sam drinks big glugging gulps from the bottle Dean gives him when they get to the car and then feels it settle heavy into his belly—that sloshing feeling, when he hasn't eaten anything solid and the water has nowhere to go. He turns the bottle over, watching the sunlight waver through the plastic, and wonders. Something in the water—a spell? A demon's work?

"Do demons even know how to swim?" Dean says, and Sam snorts despite himself. He tosses the bottle into the backseat and scratches the back of his neck, trying to think. Dean keeps watching him, still worried. "Okay, come on. What do we know?"

Sam spreads out on the trunk: the case files, the disappearances. Three years of people gone, maybe longer. He should've done more research before they left—well, tonight he can do more. "I can't see anything connecting them," he says, staring down at all the pictures. "Other than the place."

"Okay," Dean says. He chews on the corner of his lip, frowning, and then taps the date of the police report. "We have the dates they were reported missing. That week wasn't a full moon, but is there another pattern?"

Oh. Why didn't Sam think of that? "Shit," he says, under his breath, and Dean gives him a little arch look, and he says, "okay, okay," and does the math. That one in early March, that one last September, and the one before—not set lengths of times between them, but when he consults the silly-but-useful astrology hobbyist app on his phone: "They've all fallen near the half-moon," he comes up with, and frowns. "What walks at the half-moon?"

"Half a werewolf?" Dean says, but shrugs, and looks back out at the woods. Their parking spot is far enough away that they can't hear the water running, but Sam knows there are all kinds of little water sources in a forest this big—little creeks, little ponds. He stands thinking, leaning his hip against the car, and is brought back what feels like a million years ago to—that job, when he and Dean were first riding together again, with the boy's ghost trapped in the lake. The dark water, freezing cold, closing above his head. In his mind he hears Dean's voice say _it felt like drowning_ , and his stomach turns over, a frisson of something vile crawling over his skin. His hand closes reflexively into a fist, a nasty memory cupped in his palm.

"Hey, you with me?" Dean says, and Sam looks up to find Dean giving him that same old look.

He dredges up a smile. "Always," he says.

For some reason it makes Dean's eyes shutter. "Good," he says, and starts gathering up all the files. "We need to figure out what's going on with the creek. Come on. I know a guy."

He sorts the printouts neatly, more or less, and tosses them into the backseat less neatly. Sam frowns. In the trees all around, the birds are at least singing as the afternoon fades, but when the engine roars to life they burst out of the canopy, winging away to the east.

*

The ranger's station isn't what Sam expected. For one, it's not a station so much as it really is a log cabin. Sam thought Dean was joking, before. The place is old, really old, and it looks barely held together by a lot of rusted nails and hope. "You think the Park Service even remembers this thing is out here?" Sam mutters, and Dean shrugs, but at that point the ranger's answered the door and they have to put on their professional smiles.

He remembers Dean, is polite to Sam. Younger than Sam expected, maybe thirty, with reddish hair under a baseball cap and a plaid shirt on in place of the usual brown canvas. "It's really just me out here," he says, and yeah, that's plain to see.

A wood-fired stove, a bed tucked into the corner that's made in the sense that a blanket's been tossed over the mess of sheets and rucked-up pillow. There must be a generator somewhere, since there's a fridge, but there's no television, no computer Sam can see. There are three full bookshelves of ranger logs, maps of the area, and a topographical feature that the ranger's working on, and is showing off a little to Dean. Preening, and Sam's not sure Dean's noticing how much.

"I'm out twice a day," he says, smiling. He leans in close to where Dean's bending over the map, pointing out a few spots. "Some interesting stuff I'm noticing. Flora that seems to be transplanted; fauna populations shifting. Something to do with climate change, is what I'm thinking, Agent."

Agent. Sam rolls his eyes, keeps flipping through the daily journal the kid's been keeping. Dean says, "What about right here—this creek. Where's the source for that?" and Sam doesn't hear the eager response because he's reading in sloppy half-cursive that two days before the redheaded mother was declared missing there were lights, in the woods.

"Lights," he says, under his breath, and Dean and the ranger look up at him. Dean tilts his head; the kid looks bewildered. Sam turns the book around, slides it across the table. "What's this report—is this yours? What are the lights you're talking about? Flashlights—hikers, maybe?"

Long pause, while the kid reads the page. Dean looks at Sam over his head, questioning, but Sam doesn't know—it's just the only thing that pinged unusual, on the right day.

"I…" Pause again. The kid drags the ball cap off his head and pushes his hand through his hair. He looks naive, without it, with his hair falling over forehead. Sam thinks of Jack, confused and young. "I don't remember. That was—jeez, this month, right?" He frowns, genuinely puzzled, and Sam's watching his eyes when his brow clears, and he looks up at Sam with no more worry. "You're right, it was hikers. They're not supposed to hike overnight out here, but I don't worry unless they're causing trouble."

He walks over to the wall that passes for a kitchen, fills a glass at the sink. Dean stares at him, and Sam stares too, while he drinks down the crystal-clear water.

*

"I have never been so glad to only drink beer," Dean says, and Sam can't even needle him for it. That expression from the ranger is seared in his mind. It follows him, down off the ridge and into the tiny town, and by unspoken agreement they end up back at the diner, for food and light and the bustle of the curly-haired girl, surprised to see them but smiling. Normal.

They order coffee, sandwiches. When she pours it Sam watches the dark shine filling up his cup and then has a shiver, revulsion again, and looks up to find Dean frowning at his mug and doing the same. "Can I get you anything else?" the girl says, sweet, and Dean opens his mouth and closes it again before Sam says, "We're good."

They look at their coffee, when she's gone. There are a few other tables. The old guy Sam saw on his first visit is sitting again at the counter, eating another cheeseburger. Dean nudges the mug with his spoon, squinting. "We had it before," he says.

Sam wonders. Do they have filters built into their taps? Does it come in from the forest? Does the addition of the coffee, the acid in the grounds, change it at all? "We don't know what it is," Sam says, "it could be nothing," but Dean pushes the mug away with the back side of his knife like even getting near something made with the water here will poison them. Ship's probably sailed, but—Sam does the same, and rubs his forehead after. He could really have done with a cup of coffee.

"What was it?" Dean says.

Sam looks up. His head hurts; he's been lost in thought. Dean's watching him. Not quite to the over-the-top panic of the ridge but he's clearly still worried. "You touched that creek and it was like—" Dean shakes his head. "What happened?"

Like what, Sam wants to know. Hard to articulate, especially when he doesn't know for sure in his own head. "It was warm," he says. Thinking out loud. He uncurls his hand, looks at his palm. No discoloration, no strangeness bleeding up through his veins. He's had that before; he knows what to look for. "Way warmer than it should be. It didn't smell bad. Didn't smell like anything. Really dark, like... I don't know, a lake a night, even though it was running water in the middle of the day and couldn't have been more than, what, six inches deep? A foot?"

Dark's gathering, outside the window. Night falling through the forest. Dean says, "But what _happened_ ," and Sam doesn't have an answer, still.

"It was—" He rubs his thumb over his fingertips, reassures himself in the warm sensitivity of his skin. "Fear. Made me sick to my stomach. I saw…" He shakes his head, frustrated. "Damn it, Dean, I don't know. I saw something and I can't remember. Which—I guess that's proof enough. It's magic of some kind or another."

"Can't remember," Dean says, looking Sam in the eyes. The waitress arrives, then, setting down their food—tuna melt for Sam, club for Dean, decent fries for both of them—and Dean squints at Sam for a half-second and then turns the thousand megawatt smile on her, open and clear. "Thanks a ton. This place is just great, you know? We're real lucky we came here."

She smiles back, easy and friendly. Her hair's tugged back in a half-assed ponytail, curls frizzing out in a puff at the back of her head. "I guess we're lucky too, then," she says, and turns the smile sidelong at Sam, genuine. "Not often we get such cool visitors."

"Yeah?" Sam says. Dean nudges his boot under the table—like Sam doesn't know the play. "It's so peaceful up here. I guess a crowd would screw that up. I'd think you'd get a bunch of people wanting to go out into the forest, though. Hunting, and stuff. Birdwatching."

She blinks, pleased. "I love birdwatching," she says, and Sam frowns for a second. She told him that.

"You spend a lot of time on the trails, then?" Dean says, taking back over.

"Definitely," she says. She leans a hip against Dean's side of the booth, talking mostly to Sam. Dean raises his eyebrows at Sam and he just has to lean in, resigned. Seems like fifty-fifty, anymore, and he has to take his turn. "It's actually crazy—this is the best birding forest in the state, I think, but no one seems to have it listed in any of the guides or anything."

"Why's that?" Sam says. Makes sure his voice is extra-warm, interested.

She flushes. It's easy, sometimes; makes him feel bad, how easy. Dean nudges his boot again. "Oh," she says, tucking a non-existent strand of hair behind her ear, "it's just—there are all kinds of birds that you wouldn't think would live here, that live here. You know, it's PA, so I expect to see juncos and blue jays, downy woodpeckers, that sort of thing. They're here, but I also saw this parrot I'm pretty sure is supposed to be in Costa Rica, and this gorgeous blue grandala that's supposed to be in the Himalayas."

Talking faster, excited. She really does love birds. Sam smiles at her more honestly, and she seems to realize she was babbling and blushes pinker.

"Sounds wild," Dean says, slightly quelling. Sam glances back down to find him tapping his thumb on the table. Impatient, or annoyed? Sam sits back and Dean takes a deep breath. "So, anything else weird about the woods? We're planning a hike. Anything we should check out? I know a hunter went missing. Don't want to fall in any canyons down there."

She frowns, tilts her head. "Someone went missing?" she says.

Sam looks at Dean, shakes his head so-slightly. "Rumor we heard," he says, and she turns her head over her shoulder as a grey-haired woman comes in, the bell over the door jingling, and turns back with a shrug, says, "Never heard that, but you guys be careful, okay?" and goes, perfectly cheerful.

"What?" Dean says.

"We had that exact conversation," Sam says. Different booth, the daylight clear. Her, listening, focused. He keeps his voice low, and wonders if it matters. "Yesterday, Dean. I said I was going to hike, I asked about the missing people, and she had the exact same reaction. Like she'd never heard a word about it. She wasn't faking."

Dean licks his lips, looks at his sandwich. "Something in the water," he says, and doesn't even try to make it sound like a joke.

Back at the bed and breakfast, Dean cracks a beer and drains half of it before they've even got their jackets off—he opens another and hands it to Sam, and Sam does the same. He's wondering about the shower in their bathroom. The water came out clear, that morning, but was it doing something?

"They're not crazy," Dean says, definitive. Sam sits on his bed and Dean sits mirroring him on the other, and Dean picks at the label on his beer, thinking out loud. "They're not. Right? They're not hiding something, and the town's not… getting anything, right? It's not like they're sacrificing tourists for great harvests, 'cause there's no farmland. They're not famous for anything. No crazy fertility baby booms, and people seem to get old just like anywhere else."

"Giving up on the cult idea?" Sam says, and Dean gives him a look. "Yeah. It's just like they can't—acknowledge it, somehow? Like the missing people are a blank spot in their memories. Deliberate, like they can't hold onto it."

Dean's mouth twists, frustrated. He stands up and goes to the window, leaving his beer on the sill to twitch the curtains aside and look at the street. Sam doubts there's anything out there, unless the widower from this morning is stalking the sidewalk again. Guy was a jerk but Sam feels an abrupt wave of true sympathy for him. His wife, evaporated seemingly into thin air, and the people who should've been able to help just mildly puzzled, blank-eyed. When Dean was gone, his body stolen away by an archangel, at least when Sam was combing the country he had something to go on. He imagines, if Jody or Garth or Carlos had just stared at him, useless, when he begged them to go out looking, to keep their ear to the ground for any hint of an angel's influence, to tell him instantly if they caught wind of a beautiful man with green eyes, doing things that couldn't be done. He would've—his jaw works, hands curling around his beer. He looks at Dean's back, framed broad in the dark window. He would've done a lot worse than be a little rude to strangers.

"What are you thinking?" Sam says. Makes Dean look over his shoulder, and even if he's frowning, it still feels good every time it's Dean looking back at him, when Sam starts thinking about the alternative. Sam tips his head. "Witch? Demon? Something weirder?"

"Weird doesn't even start to cut it," Dean says, but he turns and plants his ass on the sill, and he's back with Sam instead of thinking about whatever trouble. "Memories are one thing. That stream…" He shakes his head. "It's got to be something out there. And what was that the curly chick was saying about birds? Ranger said something about that, too."

"Things not being where they're supposed to be," Sam says. He shrugs. "None of it adds up to something I can think of. You?"

"Teleporting memory-and-people eater?" Dean says, pushing off the window. "Feel like I would remember that one. Or not, I guess."

Sam snorts. Dean heads for the bathroom and Sam sighs when the door's closed behind him, and drains his beer. They're going to need to lay in an actual supply—sealed water from the store, canned coffee. Maybe some of those revolting five hour energy things Dean will use, when it's a two a.m. haul through the dark. The shower rushes on and Sam looks at the door, chews his lip. Well—Dean's probably not opening his mouth under the stream and drinking it down, and if whatever strange magic is actually in the water can get through their skin—shit. They've got bigger problems.

*

That night, Sam dreams of the forest. Night, and the trees are impossibly tall, with great avenues of bare soft soil between their trunks. He walks barefoot through air so hot and thick it's like stepping through warm water, and though it's suffocating in the dream he feels—calm. He doesn't know where he's going, and it doesn't matter how long it will take to get there. The trees recede infinite into the dark distance. He's alone and that's nagging at him but he doesn't know why. It's peaceful. It's dark.

He wakes up in an instant, with no foggy brain from sleeping and no confusion about where he is. The bed and breakfast, the tiny town, the job. He breathes in slowly, vague unease drifting against his skin from the dream, and realizes only after a second that he's hearing panting, from the other bed, and he twists around to find Dean sitting up, with his back to Sam. Still night, and Sam doesn't know how long either of them were sleeping, but it probably wasn't enough. Dean's breathing isn't slowing down and Sam sits up. "Hey," he says, soft and easy, and Dean's head drops, barely visible in the dark. "Dean."

"I'm okay, Sammy," he says. Voice rough as anything, like those days when he first got back from hell. "Go back to sleep."

Sam pushes the blankets away, sits up. "Yeah, that's what I'm gonna do," he says, mild, and Dean huffs, braces his hands on the edges of his bed. Sam hesitates, but he gets up, and when he sits down a respectable few inches away Dean doesn't flinch.

Moon's shining in the window, and their various chargers all glowing. Just enough to see Dean's edges, his skin paler than the dark. Sam sits, quiet, and Dean drags in a breath very slow through his nose, blows it out slower. He's never been good at not talking. Sam waits.

"Michael killed—" Dean licks his lips. "A lot. A lot of people."

Sam bites the inside of his lip. All the times he was possessed, before—it was strange, when Dean first stumbled back to him, shaking and empty, to realize that Dean never was. Until this time, this worst time.

"I know you think that's on you," Sam says. Dean glances at him, shine of his eyes in the dark. He shrugs, shakes his head. "You already know what I'm gonna say, huh."

"Yeah, you're Mister Predictable," Dean says, but quietly. He rubs his hand over his hair, sighs. "It's just one more thing. All these years, you'd think…"

It never goes away. Sam knows that, better than anyone. He wants to touch Dean's leg, his shoulder. Wants to drag him into a hug. To go to sleep, chest to chest, and know that it'll be better in the morning.

"Would you forget?" he says, instead of all that. Dean's still beside him. Listening. "If you could, I mean. You think it'd be better?"

He's thought about it. A million years ago, it feels like, when it was his turn, and he went insane very literally from holding it inside. Castiel took the madness away, but the memories were still there—scabbed over, not something he had to think about all the time, but there. He doesn't really remember what it felt like to be the version of himself that couldn't remember what had happened, when Lucifer had him. Sometimes he thinks he's better, now. Sometimes he's not sure.

Dean makes a clucking sound, with his cheek. "Wish in one hand," he says, and shrugs, and turns his face away.

They did wish, Sam thinks. With the pearl. They made a different call. "Yeah," he says, heartsore, and Dean grips his knee and pushes off, goes into the bathroom. The door closes softly, and Sam listens to the muffled sound of him pissing, and touches the warm spot on the mattress where he sat. They could've forgotten. They could've been different. What does it say about the both of them, that they'd rather be this—be here—than anywhere else?

Sam gets back into his own bed. When Dean comes back out of the bathroom he stays quiet, and watches from his pillow while Dean climbs back in, and lays his head down against the pillow with his face toward Sam. Sam hopes he doesn't dream again. If he does—well. Sam will be here, when he wakes up.

*

Dean runs supply in the morning. Sam packs their gear, careful in the tiny parking lot behind the b&b. After all the research he could do with the Letters files he has on hand, he still has no idea what they're going after. They've got witch-killing bullets, salt and herbs, dead man's blood, silver blades. They might need all of them, or none. Neither of them were expecting a hike and so they don't have their sleeping bags, but they've got rolled blankets in the car and that'll have to do. He smiles, tucking those into their duffels. Dean's going to bitch so much about sleeping on the ground, if that's what it comes to.

"Okay," Dean says, returning from the diner. He holds up a plastic bag, grinning. "Got you an arugula/egg white/sadness salad, and food a man might actually eat for me."

Sam rolls his eyes and takes the bag out of his hand. "You're lucky you have an angel friend who'll fix your cholesterol levels," he says, and Dean pops his eyebrows obnoxiously before he picks the keys out of Sam's jacket pocket. Sam checks the styrofoam, a little concerned, but of course Dean wasn't the asshole he pretends to be. A decent lunch they can eat out in the forest, sandwiches and fruit to go with the trail food Dean brought back from the store and the two cases of water sitting on the Impala's floorboards. Sam hopes it doesn't actually take as long as they've prepped for. Dean's bitching without booze will reach unfortunately epic proportions, if they're out too long.

An hour's drive on winding roads, trying to get to a different part of the trail. Woods everywhere, and the sun thin on a cloudy day, and shadows laying all over everything. They finally park at the last trailhead they could find on the ranger's map—abandoned, at least today, with the weather uncertain and the day chill. Sam stands at the wooden fence around the lot and smells earth. Birds, calling, and he thinks of the waitress's excitement about species she'd never seen and smiles.

"All right, Sasquatch, let's get going," Dean says, and when Sam turns around he's paused with his hands on the trunk, thinking. He squints at Sam. "You know, if someone sees you in the woods, they really would be seeing a sasquatch. You feeling blurry?"

"Dude," Sam says, and Dean shrugs and hands him his share of—well, brunch, now. They eat leaning against the trunk, and Sam sips cautiously at a bottle of water. It tastes like nothing, like bottled water usually does. He licks his lips, looking out into the trees.

The stream Sam saw curved north, trickling around the ridge of the town's best trail and falling off into the woods. Dean walks ahead, Sam following, going immediately off the prescribed trail on the guide and cutting as straight a line as they can through the forest, heading toward where that stream should flow, if they read the map right. They usually do.

It is quiet. Dean's boots crunch in the dead twigs and leaves, and Sam follows his steps, watching when he steps over a rock, having to duck more when he dips below a branch. The woods are alive around them but it's peaceful. Birds, and distant water. Dean stops in his tracks and Sam comes up beside him to see him watching a fox, frozen in its path around a tree. "Hey, Tod," Dean says, very quietly, and the fox tilts its head almost like it's listening before it bolts, rushing away with a scurry of scattered leaves. Sam huffs, and Dean smiles at him, and he looks good. Truly good. No shadows to him, and his shoulders relaxed under the burden of the duffel, and no worries tucked into the corners of his mouth or eyes. Sam smiles back at him, something warm and certain in his chest. Dean's lips part, slightly, and he looks all over Sam's face. The smile fades but he still looks content. He looks at the ground, smiles briefly there at nothing, and then jerks his head at the trail. Sam takes the lead, then, and Dean follows, and it's…

There were years where they couldn't have done this. Not like this. They worked together because that felt like it was all they knew how to do, and they were competent because they'd been trained from kids to be competent, and they got the job done. No matter what—people were saved, or if they couldn't manage that then at least the bad thing got dead, and it didn't much matter, it felt like, whether they were happy. Whether they even wanted to be doing what they were doing. There were years there where Sam tried do anything but—and where, he realized later, Dean wished he could do the same. Of course they couldn't. The responsibility of the knowledge was too great. With enough years, Sam's realized that it wasn't even the job he wanted to leave. It was—the feeling. Feeling like he wasn't good enough—feeling like Dean would be taken from him—feeling like, no matter what, there was just too much evil in the world, crowding all around, and feeling like somehow if he turned his back to it maybe he wouldn't have to see it, anymore. Like ignoring the problem would make it go away. He used to be very young.

Afternoon, now. Warmer, even in the shade under the newly releafing trees. The sun filters down and colors Dean's hair lighter, when they stop and share a bag of nuts—Dean with M&Ms mixed into his—and drink clear water. Still quiet, in the woods and between the two of them. It's comfortable. Enough time together, enough time working this job, and they're… okay. Disasters they've overcome, that could've ended the world or just the world between them, and they're still together. Still got their boots on, and their guns at hand, and their faces turned toward the same goal. Dean gets up off the stump he was sitting on and brushes mud off his ass, annoyed and distracted, and he's just… Sam turns away, busies himself with packing up their trash as small as he can, so Dean won't see his expression. The job's just their job and it doesn't hurt, anymore. Not much can, when he has this.

Another hour before they run into the stream. Dean spreads the map on a dry patch of ground, trying to pinpoint their location, while Sam crouches at the side of the stream bed. Warm, and dark, and for all Dean was joking yesterday he really does wish he knew more about botany, or ornithology, so he could get some kind of sense about what's going on. Some of the trees around them are maple, and some are cherry, but there are others he doesn't recognize. Is there something that shouldn't be here? What would it mean, if that were so?

"Okay," Dean says, while Sam's staring at the water, happily bubbling down the slight slope. He comes back, takes a knee by Dean's side, and Dean points. "Here—that's the ridge, and we parked—here—so with how fast we were walking, the time that's passed, we've got to be…" He taps the paper and Sam frowns, trying to calculate. The stream's flowing south, southeast, so the source is to the northwest, and Dean follows his thought without him needing to say anything, tracing a line into the empty greenness of the national forest. Nothing nearby, for miles and miles. Good place to hide, for a monster, or for something monstrous.

"Are there bears out here?" Dean says, abruptly. "Or—I don't know. Wolves or something?"

Sam shrugs, looking around. "Black bears, probably. Not wolves. Why?"

"Thinking about predators," Dean says. He nudges Sam, gently, and nods at the forest canopy. "Shouldn't there be birds?"

Sam frowns at him and looks up. It's—quiet. He stands up, looks around. The water, and Dean breathing beside him, and—that's it. No birdsong, or rustling among the ground cover. "They could be hiding from us," he tries, but it's bull and Dean gives him a look that says they both know it.

The stream bubbles, splashing against the rocks. It'd feed the animals around it, and sink into the earth, and feed into the taproots of the trees arching tall above them. He rests a hand against a trunk and it feels—like a tree. He shakes his head and Dean touches his side, draws him away. "Come on," he says, very quiet like something might hear them, in the growing silence. Maybe something will. "We've got daylight still to burn. Let's keep going."

They keep the distance of a few trees between themselves and the water. Hiking along, and Dean pauses here and there to mark some distance on a map. He's always had a better internal sense for that kind of thing than Sam. A breeze sweeps in—rattles the branches above them, rustles dead leaves along past their boots—and Sam shivers even if it's not that cold. Dean glances at him, like he knew, and holds back a second so that they can walk side-by-side.

The stream widens, deepens. Not a river, but still dark, still too warm when Sam holds his hand a safe five feet above the surface. Rock formations start appearing, the water cutting through ancient stone, and Dean climbs one, a boulder that puts his boots somewhere near Sam's shoulder, and looks down the waterway into the forest. "Ways to go," he says, and Sam looks up at the sky. Getting darker. His watch tells him that nightfall's only a few hours off, and they've gone too far with nothing to show for it to head back to the car now.

"Call it?" Dean says, looking down at Sam.

Funny, to see him at this angle. Sam shrugs, squinting up, and Dean crouches. "Come a long way," Sam says, and Dean snorts, says quietly, "Yeah, you can say that again," but he slides down off the boulder anyway, fetching up against Sam to keep his balance, and Sam squeezes his shoulder. They'll be fine, as long as they stick together.

Night. There are more rocks, now, rearing high among the trees. They pick an almost-sheer formation to camp against, higher up the slope and further from the creek, and Dean goes out to gather some sticks to start a fire while Sam preps the ground. An owl calls, unexpected and loud, and it makes Sam jump but it's a relief. Life, at last.

Dean bitches, as predicted, about the blanket-beds. He lifts his whiskey flask in the vague direction of Kansas, says, "Miss you, baby," and Sam wrinkles his nose for a second before he realizes.

"Are you talking about your mattress?" he says.

"Best investment I ever made," Dean says, and when Sam rolls his eyes he flicks a dirt clod Sam's direction that misses by a mile. "Hey, just because you can't appreciate the finer things, don't rain on my parade."

"I think you mixed that metaphor," Sam says, but mildly. Dean shrugs, offers him the flask. Good booze in there, at least, and that Sam can appreciate. Burst of peaty sweetness at the back of his tongue, and when he hands it back Dean's fingers brush his, warm to match the warmth blooming in Sam's belly. He licks his lips, watches Dean take another sip without wiping the rim. "Can't believe I finally got you to come camping."

"No," Dean says, pointing at him. Sam grins and Dean shakes his head. "No, don't even. This is entirely work related. I'm not glamping with you out in the woods for fun, Yogi Bear."

"Not even if I make it worth your while?" Sam says, grinning, and Dean stills, and Sam hears himself a little late.

What possessed him? He tastes the whiskey inside his lips, drags in a breath, but Dean's shaking his head, looking into the fire. "Not even for Pam Anderson in nothing but hiking boots," he says.

Quite the image. Sam drags his own boots up, hooks his arms around his knees. "I thought…" He trails off and Dean looks at him, then. His eyes are darker, in the firelight, but his skin looks softer. Younger. Like years ago. "Wish it was like this more often," Sam says. Dean's brow pinches and Sam lifts a shoulder. "I don't know. Just—us. Feels like…"

Dean bites the corner of his mouth. "Been crowded?"

Sam nods, and Dean huffs, but he nods, too. It has been. Just their life, in general. Crowded and too much, all the time. Their mother, and then Jack, and then a whole crew that Sam couldn't save. Gone now, and he's going to carry the guilt about that for the rest of his days, but it was still… Those days in the bunker, when Dean had just barely been set free from Michael's hold, and all Sam wanted was to hold him close, cup his hand over the back of Dean's head and hide from the world—there wasn't an opportunity, because there was Mom, and there was Jack, and there was Cas, and there was a whole crowd of expectations and need, and Dean—

"You remember that time in, uh. Mount Victory?" Dean says. He's leaned back against the rock face, one knee drawn up. The fire lights up the stone behind him.

Mount Victory. Sam frowns, thinking back. "Kentucky?" he says, and Dean nods, and Sam remembers better. "The werewolf."

Dean's cheek sucks in on one side, huge dark shadow hollowing below the cheekbone, and Sam remembers again. A werewolf, that was right. Kentucky, and the woods, lush green but sparser than here, less dangerous. That was in the months after their dad died, Dean holding onto secrets and Sam raw with how the world seemed bigger than it had. Mount Victory was a tiny town—smaller than here, maybe—and they'd had to be really careful about questioning the people, figuring out who was leaving heartless corpses in the hollows month after month—and they'd stayed in an abandoned hunting cabin, out there in the woods, and they'd…

Dean's looking into the fire again. Sam wonders if he's remembering the same thing. But how could he not be? Ten days, in that cabin, and one queen-sized abandoned box-spring that they'd spread with their blankets and dirty laundry to make somewhat soft. A fire, in the broken grate, for light in the evening. Beers shared while sitting on the ground. Laughing with each other because they were relearning how to laugh, in those days. The moon coming in the window when the fire burned down, and how it glinted off Dean's cheekbone, and the fair freckled back of his hand, and it was hard to see his eyes then but—Sam didn't need to. He understood what Dean was saying, back then. Words weren't necessary.

Or they were. Sam looks up, at the canopy. A piece of firewood cracks, and sparks drift up into the dark. They'd fallen into it by accident, it felt like at the time. A drink left undrunk; a night when Sam had gone to sleep earlier. Maybe it wouldn't have happened. When it did he thought it'd break them worse than Dad dying had, but Dean came back that morning after he'd disappeared for three hours and he stood with his face clear in the daylight and he'd said, almost angry, _I'm not leaving_ , and Sam had stood up and said, feeling bigger than his skin, _me either, Dean_. They didn't talk about it much. Dean whispered things sometimes, quiet in a bed; Sam touched the small of Dean's back, and wondered at how Dean's ears went red. It felt bigger than both of them, and in Mount Victory Sam thought he was happy, maybe. That if things just kept going the way they were—he could handle that. He could make a life, like that.

He never told Dean that. Later, when things got worse—when Dean sold his soul—what they'd done felt small, in the face of that. Things just kept tumbling forward and those days didn't amount to much, when they stacked up against all that came after. He wonders if he'd said something—would things be better, or worse?

Hardly matters. They've had chances, to try out other worlds. Other lives. Just a few months ago, Dean held a pearl in his hand, and then afterward looked at Sam with both their hands wet from the dishes and said he wouldn't want any other life but the one they'd had. Sam could see his eyes, that time, and knew that he was telling the truth, and knew that no matter what came he was right there, too, at Dean's shoulder, where he always should've been, and where he never again wants to leave.

Moon's hard to see from here, but it's getting close to half again. It was nearly full, back then, in Kentucky.

Sam wakes up. His shoulder hurts, crammed against the ground, and he blinks at the last glowing ember of the fire before it goes out. Dark. He drags a hand over his face, tries to make his brain come online. Pale moon, barely peeking through the canopy, and across the dead fire Dean's still sleeping with that tiny rumbling chest-sound that passes for snoring, with him. Sam sits up and pops his shoulder, the bones resettling into the right shape, and tries to figure out what woke him, and then he sees—light.

Lights. He sits very still, hardly letting his chest move with his shallow breathing. Lights, moving, in the distance, passing between the long dark shadows of the trees. Three—six—too many, he can't count them, and they seem to flicker in and out. Behind the trees, or disappearing? Not coming this way, at least as far as he can tell, and he licks his lips, lifts up as quietly as he can. He touches Dean's shoulder, steady pressure that's always been enough to wake Dean to danger, only—Dean doesn't wake.

Sam frowns, leans closer. Shakes Dean's shoulder, lightly, and then grips hard, but he just sleeps. Like Sam's not even there, like the pressure that must be near-painful in the soft muscle is nothing but air. He's breathing—snorts, even, in his sleep—and Sam digs two fingers down into the warm pit of his throat and feels his heart, beating slow and even. He's just not budging. Sam's alone.

Panic's right there, ready to take over, but it's not useful. Sam takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly through his nose. He cups Dean's cheek, dragging his thumb over the stubble for a stolen second, and then stands up. He's got an iron switchknife, an angel blade, salt and holy water and an exorcism memorized. He doesn't know if it's needed or enough, but there's nothing else to be done. He checks his phone: midnight, and of course no signal. The lights still drift, out in the dark. Okay. Now what?

He walks very carefully, watching for dead branches, for drifts of leaves that might rustle. Down the slope, balancing with his hand on cool bark, and the lights shift as he gets closer to the stream. It's warmer and he breathes in, takes the smell of damp earth inside. When he's down to the bank there's the sound of the water, running deep, and nothing else. He looks across to the other side of the river and one of the lights resolves—closer than he thought. Faint in a patch of moonlight, but then it moves into the darker dark under the canopy, and it looks…

Sam squints, from the safety of his own tree's shadow. Light, but approaching solid. A wave, or a particle. Insubstantial and yet it has shape, because it turns, and when it turns Sam sees that it's—shaped nearly like a person. Blurry at the edges, and small, and its limbs melted into nothing, but a head and a trunk and somehow eyes, deeper points of light, and as it turns the eyes turn too and Sam realizes too late that it's— _looking_ at him, not a filmy ghost but something that _is_ , and then he wakes up to Dean slapping him, hard, in the bright morning, and his face stings and Dean says, "Oh thank god," somewhere up beyond where Sam's eyes are watering and his jaw hurts, but even as he's cursing and clutching his face and sitting up he realizes that there's a piece of bark clutched in his palm, and sap under his nails, from where he clutched at the tree beside him in shock.

Dean thinks he was dreaming. "Dude, I am _telling_ you I wasn't," Sam says.

"Sleepwalking, then." Dean rolls his eyes at the look Sam gives him. "I'm not trying to be a dick. Just, from what you're saying, it's not like anything we've ever seen before, and we've seen a hell of a lot at this point, Sammy. Spirits don't look like that, they just look like—people."

"I know." Sam sucks the inside of his cheek. His fingers are still sticky with the sap. He'd wash them off in the river, but. He shakes his head. "I don't know. It felt real. Not like a ghost, or a death echo, or something. Didn't even feel dead. But I saw it."

Dean's watching him, over the ashes of their fire, but Sam doesn't want to see his expression and doesn't look back. It's a chilly morning and the trees above the rock face are full of singing birds, the woods teeming with life. It doesn't fit against what Sam saw. Like the midnight world was some other place, slipping against this one. If he'd gone closer…

"Okay." Dean claps his hands, saying it, and Sam's train of thought derails while Dean stands up, walks out to the space between the trees where the water's visible, down the slope. "Say it really happened. You weren't just, whatever, tripping the light fantastic. Was it what took people?"

Sam gathers a handful of damp soil, rubbing it between his palms while he thinks. It's soft, but it'll grind away the stickiness if he gives it time. "No," he says, eventually. "Or—I don't know, but I don't think so. It didn't feel… aggressive, I guess? There were a bunch of them, too. Off in the trees. If there were that many, don't you think more people would be going missing?"

Dean shrugs. "Not if they feed as a group." He looks back in time to see the face Sam makes, and smiles, but it's more grim than anything. "Guess there's another option."

"What?"

He looks down toward the stream, thoughtful. "They could be what's left over after something else is full."

It's a thought that sticks. They eat quickly, leftover trail mix and Clif bars Sam insisted on even if Dean insisted right back that they taste like wallpaper paste (how would he know, Sam said, and Dean said _don't ask_ ), and they brush their teeth, careful to waste as little water from their bottles as possible. They each have a few left, tucked into the base of their bags, and a little trail food, but they can't make it out here too much longer without either going back for more supply, or foraging the woods.

"Don't ask me to take out a rabbit or something," Dean says, making a face. "I'm not eating Robin Hood characters, man."

"Because a cow's so much better," Sam says, but shakes his head, forestalling the bicker-fest that was sure to follow. "It's the water that's the problem. Plus, I don't know if I'd trust anything that was out here—animal or vegetable. It's all part of the same system."

"Yeah, the same mixed-up, weird system," Dean says, and looks around at the canopy. Still a morning loud with birdsong. "We go all the way back to the car and we'll have wasted yesterday. We're good for another twenty-four hours, right?"

Dean's better at calculating that stuff than Sam. Still—with the water, with the little food they've got—"As long as you don't bitch about being hungry," Sam says, and smiles at Dean's instant playact of outrage.

"Oh, if one of us is the bitch," he starts, and it's—comfortable, easy, to needle each other as they cover up their ashes, as they strike their little campsite. Sam desperately wants coffee and he can see Dean cracking his neck, like he slept wrong or badly, but that doesn't matter, now. They've just got to move forward, as far as they can before they either figure out the mystery or are forced to turn back.

Turn back. Sam touches Dean's arm, stopping him in his tracks as they move back down the slope. He frowns, thinking, while Dean waits, and then leads the way—the way he walked in the middle of the night, down to the tree trunk he hid by, with its little hole of scraped-away bark. He touches it and looks across the rushing water, feeling the humid warmth on his face. "They were all going one way," he says. That slim small figure, with its intense glowing eyes. He breathes in the dampness, remembering, and looks down the bank to where the stream turns beyond a bend of trees. "Toward the source of the water."

"Well, that's not creepy," Dean mutters, but he follows Sam's look for a long few seconds before he takes the lead, and Sam can't do anything but follow. At least it's a hint that they're going the right direction.

They take it a little slower, that day. Not wanting to waste energy, watching for clues. By the too-warm water everything's still, as before, and they can't hear anything but the stream surging over the rocks. According to Dean's map and their combined sense of direction, they're getting close to about as far from civilization as they can get, in these woods. Probably a good sign, Sam thinks, if you're searching for an unknown supernatural monster, but not great for their ability to get out to safety, if they need to. He still remembers those woods, where he was shot by the werewolf. No cell signal, no one to call for help. He hopes that's not something they're going to have to relive, today.

Around noon they come to a place where a tree has fallen, the log forming a makeshift bridge, and it's a maple, Sam's pretty sure, but where it's splashed with the water it's—wrong. "What the hell," Dean says, quietly, and Sam comes up to his shoulder and can only agree. The tree bark is the usual grey-brown in some places, but deep mossy green in others, and in the spots where the log has sunk a little and the water's nearly halfway up the tree seems caught halfway—parts of it a blackened dead thing, like it was caught in a wildfire and these are only the ashes of what's left, but right next to those it's a glowing pure white wood with new growth peeking out, the leaves unfurling under the dark water in an entirely visible pale green. Not a maple. Not anything Sam's ever seen.

"I'm thinking we shouldn't use it as a bridge," Dean says. Sam crouches by the bank and the heat of the stream is almost oppressive. Sauna. Dean touches his shoulder but Sam's good—the water doesn't really splash up from the rocks, doesn't mist. Another strangeness in this whole forest full of strange.

Sam picks up a pebble, rolls it between his fingers. "Things not being where they're supposed to be," he says, thinking aloud. He tosses the pebble into the water and it sinks without a ripple. Dean mutters _jesus_ above him. Parts of nature getting lost. Physics getting weird, the world tweaked. The town, with its happy but ignorant people. He chews the inside of his lip, stands up, and when he looks over Dean's face is serious, frowning at the water. "We have no idea what we're walking into, man."

"I know." Dean rubs his hand over his mouth, eyes distant, before he shrugs. "What else are we going to do?"

That's always the problem. They keep going.

Sunset and Sam's on his last bottle of clean water. They're higher in elevation. He climbs a tree, awkwardly and with Dean calling up entertained advice, and when he's high enough he can almost see—the forest sloping gradually away. The small gap in the trees, where the stream cuts through. From matching against the map and their view from the overlook they're getting close to that empty place they figured might be a pond or lake. The source.

When Dean calls a stop Sam realizes it's the first time they've talked in a while. The stream has narrowed, though it's still not that deep, and they can hear louder water—a fall?—somewhere to the west. Dark, under the trees, and Sam can only see a shadowy version of Dean's face. His lips, shining when he licks them, and his eyes gleaming. "We've either got to keep going with flashlights or we gotta wait it out," Dean says.

Sam rolls his shoulders, under the straps of his bag. He can't tell how close the rushing water is, but it's not far. Still. A few hours yet, until midnight, and the slim glowing figures are fresh in his mind. "Wait," he decides, "I want to see if those things pop up again," and Dean nods.

The stream is narrower, and not far along there's a sort of miniature canyon where it's split some ancient rock. Darker than dark, in there, although when Sam flashes light along it he can see a path, picked out in slippery-looking rocks above the water. Dark, but it holds Sam's attention, even as he lets his flashlight sag. The water's loud. He stands there, breathing the warm damp air, until Dean smacks his arm and he finally blinks—and lets himself be drawn away, to a small clear space a little farther from the stream, and the canyon's relegated to the back of his mind while he and his brother set up for the night.

Another fire, smaller this time. They each have one energy bar left, and Dean knocks his against Sam's as an ironic toast. "Feast for kings," he says, but his smile's still more or less real. Sam snorts, and tries to make his last, even if Dean's done in two slightly gross but efficient bites.

There's a big boulder, smooth-ish on one side, that they both lean their backs against. Gives a good view of the slope down to the stream, the trees lit up in flickering orange. Dean stretches out his boots toward the fire, folds his arms over his chest. "Should've brought the cooler," he says. "Man's not meant to live on protein bars and Aquafina."

"I don't know if lugging a twelve-pack through the woods is the best use of our energy," Sam says, and Dean waves a hand. Vague pantomimed disgust but he's still relaxed, doesn't go for the easy argument.

Sam stretches out too, lets his head lean back against the rock. The canopy's a seamless dark with the sky and he can't see the moon. Dean sighs, but not in a way where he sounds like the world's crashing down around his ears, and Sam lets his boot tip so it knocks into Dean's. "Okay?"

Dean doesn't budge. "Got a tree root digging into my ass." Sam huffs, tips his head too, and the corner of Dean's mouth is turned up, the skin around his eyes gently crinkled in the firelight. "Yeah, I'm good, Sammy. Never better."

Even hungry, even tired, even out here in the empty dark with danger waiting, it doesn't for this moment sound absurd. Sam shifts, bends his knee, and like that their calves are brushed up against each other, the heat of Dean's leg barely felt through their layers of jeans. Dean looks at him sidelong and Sam knows he's not getting away with anything, but Dean doesn't move so—so it's okay, maybe.

This whole trip. These last few days. With Dean possessed it felt like the world was just on the brink of burning, all the time. Any moment Sam could've turned around and his brother would've been gone and just like that it would have been—but it didn't happen, in the end. Michael is dead, and with the initial raw guilt and fury of the other hunters' deaths mitigated, Sam's… present. They're together and that's all either of them want. It's odd, somehow, to feel that. To know it, deep, and know that Dean's feeling the same thing. There were so many years where it felt like even if they did want the same thing they were coming at it from incompatible angles. It's a strange calm, to be here, with Dean at his side, and to just feel—complete.

"You know," Sam says. Dean's head tips a little toward his, though Sam doesn't really know where he's going with it. His chest feels odd. Tight and cracked-open, all at once. "You were talking about Mount Victory, last night? I was just thinking about—after that. After we closed the gate to hell. After I died, the first time." He snorts. "That's such a dumb sentence."

"Well, we got experience," Dean says. He leans forward and tosses another stick onto their fire, and it bursts up a little rainbow of orange sparks. When he sits back, arms again folded, he's right up against Sam so they're practically pressed together—calf and hip and shoulder. Solid. "Anyway. What about it?"

Those days. Dean had made that deal, that first deal, and Sam hadn't known what to do. When it was so scary, and Dean was so wild, and everything Sam wanted seemed about ten thousand miles from possible. "Feels like a hundred years ago, doesn't it?" Sam says, and Dean nods. Longer, Sam guesses, considering the time-warps their brains have been through. Doesn't mean he can't reach back and remember what it was like. Remember Dean sitting there, a hand's width away on the bench seat in the car, and that distance feeling completely impossible to bridge.

"I wish it hadn't gone that way," Sam says. He rubs at a scrape on the base of his thumb, messing with the scab instead of looking Dean in the eye. "I know it's—I mean, we're good now. I guess sometimes I just feel… I don't know. We gave ourselves the raw end of the deal, sometimes. Maybe it didn't have to be like that."

Dean's quiet, for a time that goes past comfortable, but Sam can wait. He's spent a long time waiting. He folds his hands in his lap and feels Dean's heat seeping into his side, and watches the fire crack one of Dean's starter logs in two.

"I thought about it," Dean says, at last. His voice is even enough. A little soft, maybe. Maybe Sam's just hoping for soft. "Back—not then, but after that. When we dragged out Lucifer, and after I got done being so pissed at you. I wondered, if we'd—if maybe that would've gone different."

A lot elided in there but Sam hears it all, just the same. Jesus. Back then, when it didn't seem like there was a day that Sam was anything but miserable, angry, raw. At its worst when Dean was in hell but not much better when he was back, and neither of them could look at each other right. Then after—freeing Lucifer, and all that came with him—when Sam was trying everything he could to make up for what he'd done, to make things right, and it turns out that Dean had thought, that he'd wondered, even back then when it was all going so wrong—

"Dean," he says, with this weird mix in his chest of sadness for the kids they were, of misery for the wasted time, of hope. Dean sits forward, draws his knees up so he's got something to lean his elbows against, and Sam takes the chance and touches the low of his back, feeling the warm of him through his shirt. Dean's head turns and Sam huffs, shakes his head. "You ever wish you could go back in time and pound some sense into your younger self?"

"Just about every day, Sammy," Dean says, and it's warm, kind-sounding like Dean can be, sometimes.

Sam spreads his hand flat on Dean's back, just holding there. Dean's eyelids dip and then he looks at Sam, over his shoulder, and Sam smiles. Hopes it says what he wants it to say.

Dean's lower lip sucks in, caught by his teeth, and he drops one hand to Sam's thigh, just above his knee. Squeezes there, the grip grounding, and Sam draws in a slow breath. A brief smile from Dean, seeing it, but he squeezes again a little harder and then lets go. "Maybe no big revelations in the haunted woods, huh? We got work to do."

Not a no, but a good point. Sam lets his hand slide off Dean's back and nods, and Dean nods back and turns his head to look again at the fire. Still, Sam's got that little hope, flickering in his gut. "How many days do we have the b&b for?" he says, and Dean laughs, and that little flicker roars to certainty.

He almost can't believe it, except that he—he can. Back on that night with the pearl, another life laid out for both of them, possibilities rearing up on all sides, but Dean looked up at Sam, not smiling but not sad, either, and he'd said no. No, to any life but the one they had, together. He draws his knee up and lets his thigh press against Dean's side, and Dean huffs and leans against him, comfortable, and it's just—all these years, between there and here. He's thinking again, of that old cabin, of leaning over Dean in the dust-scattered light and touching his jaw, and Dean smiling at him like he had a secret he was just about to share.

Not yet. He settles his shoulders more firmly against the rock and takes a big, cleansing breath. A while yet until midnight, and nothing to fill it but waiting. Dean folds his arms on his knees and seems content to watch the fire, leaned against Sam, and—well, Sam had wanted a camping vacation. This is probably about as close as Dean will ever agree to let him get.

The fire burns down, and they both let it. Smoldering red, in the dark, that Sam watches, and then drifts for a while. Not sleeping exactly but not really here, either. A dark wood. A feeling like—emptiness.

There's a stiffening against his leg and he jolts, awake. Dean reaches down and grips his shin, bruise-tight.

They're back. Wisps, glowing in the dark. Sam didn't dream it. He sits forward and there's one not a dozen yards away, slim and small, this half-physical slip of light that drifts slow through the dark columns of the trees. The eyes gleam, bright points in the shadows, and Dean says, very quietly, "I'll be damned." Sam agrees but stays silent. There's another, further down the slope, and he's squinting at that when he sees Dean's head turn in his peripheral vision.

"Fuck," Dean says, louder. He grabs Sam and heaves him bodily, hauling them both a foot to the right in this surge of muscle—and Sam falls over Dean's side, barely catches himself from squashing him completely. He starts to get out _what the hell_ but Dean's scrambling, trying to pull Sam along, and Sam doesn't know what's going on until he turns his head and there's a wisp _there_ , sliding over the rock they'd sheltered by, drifting empty and lamp-eyed. Sam holds up an arm but it just—slides right through him, cool as spring leaves, and he gasps but it doesn't hurt, or maybe it's right to say that it doesn't cause pain. His chest does feel—wrong—but he can't analyze it before Dean's gripping his shoulders, touching his face, tucking his hair behind his ears, saying, "Sammy, talk to me—tell me you're okay, come on—"

"I'm okay," Sam says. He drags in air, watching the wisp drift along. Completely unfazed by passing through a human body. Dean grips his neck hard and Sam blinks, looks down to find Dean near-frantic, and he closes his hand around Dean's forearm, stopping Dean from near-choking him. "Really, I'm good."

Dean doesn't exactly relax, but he looks less like he's going to explode. "Should've known they could get behind us," he says, in that bitchy blame-voice that Sam's learned over the years to ignore. Always just means Dean's too worried to keep it inside. He looks back and forth between Sam's eyes, searching. "You sure? You're not gonna turn into a lamp on me, right?"

Sam snorts and shakes his head, and Dean squeezes his neck one more time before he lets go and Sam's free to sit back a little. He grounds his knuckles against his chest, trying to capture the sensation before it's too far away. Not pain. What was it?

"Definitely not ghosts," Dean says. He's keeping quiet but Sam bets they could shout and the wispy things wouldn't notice. If they even have the capacity to notice. He stands up and looks behind them, eyes searching the woods. "Damn. You weren't wrong, there's a bunch of them. All heading—"

He turns toward the stream. Sam stands up, too, and Dean grips his elbow for a second like he's an invalid. "Dude, I swear I'm fine," Sam says, and Dean raises his eyebrows but lets go.

The wisps—Sam keeps thinking it and he guesses that's the name, because he doesn't have another one. Shells, small and malformed, made of light. Dean kicks dirt over the embers of their fire and Sam zips up their packs, and when they set off again they're careful, try to make sure they're not in the path of one of the little floating things. Sam leads the way down the slope toward the stream, and when they're close enough to the water to feel the heat it seems suddenly like the wisps are all around, slipping through the trees slow and silent, and they're not frightening. They make Sam a little uneasy, sure, but they're less scary than just—

"Kinda sad," Dean says, very low behind Sam's back.

Sam glances backwards to see that Dean's standing still, even with a shotgun held loose at his side, frowning across the stream at the wisp closest to them. Empty, its eyes turned toward the canyon, and Sam guesses he can see what Dean means. They don't seem to be alive, but they don't seem to be dead, either. Just these barely-formed things, with no apparent drive other than to drift toward the water. Does it count as existing? Sam hardly knows.

Fingers brush his tricep, through his jacket—Dean, catching his attention, nodding. Sam bites the inside of his cheek and keeps going, leading the way along the bank, to where the canyon starts.

With their flashlights, the sides of the canyon are damp, glossy rock, curving and mostly-smooth with the long-ago carving of the water. Green things grow darkly above the flow, and strange pale pink mushrooms, and it smells like wet earth but weirdly sweet, too, in a way that catches in the back of Sam's throat. The path, if that's what to call it, is picked out as a ledge along the west wall where the stream seems to have narrowed in some ancient time past. Enough room to balance, if Sam stretches his arm out to the other side to keep upright, but no room for error, especially with the rock as slippery as it is. He's glad they wear boots all the time.

Dean's face is grim in the reflected light when Sam looks back at him, but he just shrugs one shoulder and doesn't say anything. Nothing for it.

It's precarious. Sam holds the flashlight in his left hand, keeps his right on the far wall. He doesn't want to know what'd happen if he fell fully into the water. Behind him Dean is doing the same. If they go slow it's not so bad, but the heat has become oppressive—it really is a sauna, with the moisture rising up and making it hard to breathe. Sam drags in air slow through his nose, breathes out through his mouth, inches along, and tries to imagine what the hell they're going to do if they get to the end of this and it just drops them into a lake. It's not going to be fun to do backwards, that's for damn sure. Ahead, the roar of water's getting louder, echoing down the canyon, and he's hit with this dumb image of himself in a barrel, going over the falls.

"Hey, Sammy?"

"Yeah," he says, pausing.

Dean breathes out hard enough that Sam can hear it over the water. "Next trip we take, just us? We better be going to frickin' Malibu."

Sam snorts, resettling his flashlight in his hand. "Yeah, sure," he says.

In the end it's not all that far. Takes what feels like an hour, carefully edging along above the rushing water, but then there's a slight turn in the little canyon, and the ledge gets thicker, and the canyon itself gets wider, and when Sam can't anymore reach the other side he looks up and—oh. Holy shit.

"Damn," Dean says, quiet.

A few more paces, to where the canyon really ends, and it widens out to something grand. The place feels carved, nearly, a wide bowl with sheer sides rising up out of the forest, like the cratered remainder of a meteor strike made smooth by time. Trees grow up all around, climbing high on the sides of the bowl. In the center there's a pond—lake—Sam doesn't know the difference, but it's dark and glimmering in the half-moon light and it's being filled by a thin waterfall streaming over the rocks, the sound of it constant but soothing. Nearly a postcard, if it weren't for how the frail lantern-eyed wisps ringed the circumference of the water, all pointed directly at the falls.

The water. Black. There's a sort-of shore, and Sam steps along the broken rocks, closer to the edge. Dean says his name, quietly, but Sam's being careful—between two of the hovering wisps he kneels and looks at the lake, feels the heat of it, and the water's not just black from the night but actually—black. He picks up a stick and touches the surface, and when it slips beneath the water it's impossible to see. When he pulls it out he almost drops it. Leaves have burst forth, along the dead bark—pale white-green, almost iridescent. He stands again, holding it out, and Dean's frowning, and Sam's about to ask _what now_ except that—the wisps fall back, further from the water. Sam turns to see the lake surge, the edge spilling up the bank and washing over his boots, wetting him to the calf with the hot strange slickness of it, and his body's seized with that pure instant of utter wrongness and he hears Dean say—something—

—and a person, standing in the center of lake. Standing on the lake. "Here at last," they say.

A person? Sam's flashlight has flickered out to dead. He shivers, even if the water's warm, and the person—the _thing_ —walks across the water—or does it? A flicker, like something happening in the corner of his eye, and the person is standing a few yards away, their feet pale on the surface of the lake. Sam squeezes his eyes shut and sees a great empty forest, dark columns of trees. A person, a light, at the end of the corridor, and when he opens his eyes it's—them.

A smile. "You took a long time. Most come quick. And alone."

Sam breathes in. Feels like it's been a while. Dean says, behind him, "Sammy, for god's sake, you gotta say something," and Sam says in response, mouth dry, "I'm okay."

His chest has that feeling again. He covers his breastbone with one hand and looks over his shoulder. Dean's standing very still. Backpack on, shotgun held up at the ready. His eyes are massive, his skin white in the moonlight. "I can't move my feet," he says, and Sam tries to shift and realizes that neither can he. The wisps watch, ringed around the basin.

When he turns back around the person is still standing there. White—glowing really—but it's hard to pick out details. Still smiling. "Who are you?" Sam says.

They spread their hands. "What you see," they say. "My name is not yours to know." Their voice is hard to parse. Musical, dissonant. Like it's arriving in Sam's head without his ears needing to be involved.

"Did you do this?" Dean says. "To these—things. Are they yours?"

They turn their head. A flickery impression: a face Sam recognizes, and another, and another, like flipping through a photo album. "Mine, yes. They could no longer be their own selves. I gave freedom in exchange for them."

Freedom. Sam stares where the face should be, where he saw the others. A pale tired woman. Red hair. The wife. "They're—they're the people who went missing," he says.

"They're what?" Dean says, but then immediately frowns, shotgun dipping. "Freedom from what?"

A tilt, head cocked like a hunting bird. "Step into my waters and know," says the voice, and Sam thinks—it's hard to parse because it isn't one voice but many voices, the face made up of many faces, because whatever they're talking to _took_ them.

"They're what's left," Sam says. He looks at Dean instead of the thing from the water. "The wife. That hunter. It has their—their personalities, or something. The things that made them who they are. The wisps are the leftovers."

Missing people, and they'd had those folders, those cases they'd looked up. There are so many more wisps than there were folders and Sam looks at the passive not-face, puzzling as fast as he can, trying to figure it out. He thinks of the picture of that teenager, that kid who'd been hitchhiking, and he can't remember the name. He can't remember—any of the names, all those people, barely part of the world now beyond pictures in a file and a sense of absence, and as he's thinking it the boy's face flickers across the blank space, and Sam opens his mouth and then sees—

"No," Dean says. Brief, immediate. Sam blinks and looks into his own eyes. "Cut that shit out."

Dean's leveling the shotgun right at the thing's face. At Sam's face. His eyes and his nose, his mouth faintly smiling, and Sam tries to take a step back and can't. The water laps at his boots.

"You've stepped into the water," the thing says. Not Sam's own voice, at least, but seeing his lips shape the words turns something over, in his gut. "The water flows through the forest and into the people. All that it touches is offered the bargain: to become free, and to become mine."

The face changes, slips away. Sam closes his eyes and sees the girl from the diner, her nametag. What does the nametag say? Her face, confused when they asked about the people who were missing. Absent. If someone asks—if Cas comes, and asks, in the next week—about a hunter, will she say—will her eyes go blank, like—there's a forest, with a light between the trees—

Massive _crack_. Sam flinches, claps his hand over his ear, and as he opens his eyes there's an unearthly high wail and shreds, torn through the light, black steam rising. Dean racks the shotgun again, aims it at the thing's face. "Sam is not yours," he says, rough. "And he doesn't need freeing from anything."

Its hands are loose at its sides. The body stands still on the water and it isn't bleeding, but the holes in the light aren't healing up, either. "Sam," it says. Dozens of voices speaking at once. "You give your name?"

"No," Sam says, thinking—fuck, fuck, but then he doesn't think it matters. The water's warm, clinging to him, and when he looks Dean's stricken, realizing his mistake. But it was too late, already.

The wisps hover around the lake, shells of what they were. Freedom—from self, from life. From any trouble that might've led them into the woods, looking for an escape. Cruel bargains, magic they've never seen.

Deals. Rumpelstiltskin, devils, demons. Sidhe. A wood, filled with midnight, and an untouchable beckoning light. Sam forces his eyes open and the thing—the fairy, or something close—it's looking at him, with its empty face. Spreading its magic through everything the water touches, making deals that people can't get out of, taking souls and names and bodies and memory, but Sam knows a little more than most, and he's also got a brother, with a backpack full of cold iron buckshot.

"He hasn't touched the water," he says. Stillness. The thing floats, holes torn through its glowing strange skin. One hole right through its head and it's still just—the empty plate of it, waiting to be filled, looking at him. He gestures at Dean and doesn't say his name. "He's free. You can't touch him, can you?" Not waiting for a response, talking fast, trying to work it out as he goes. "He shot you with cold iron. It didn't kill you but it hurt. There's no iron in the forest."

Stillness and he blinks, throat aching, and—the forest, the woods. Midnight, and the strange shadows of people half-hidden behind the too-tall trees, and Sam can't see any of their faces because he knows, now, that they don't have faces. They aren't themselves because their selves were torn away, given up, bargained away in a bargain they didn't understand. How could they have, when the water wormed up inside them, poisoned them.

"What are you doing to the town?" he says. It comes out with hardly a sound in the forest but somewhere else he thinks his voice is loud.

The words arrive like they've been spoken into his head: the humans settled near the root of me and when the planes slipped I flowed out, and they drank from me, from my source, filling their cups and washing their bodies and growing food from the ground I fed, and so they are part of me, too, and I have their names, and they serve me unbidden. A bargain of safety. I discharge every debt.

Accentless, toneless. No stolen voices, in the place on the other side of this place. The waterfall, Sam thinks, and the dark behind it.

He opens his eyes with an effort. Dean's been saying his name, not bothering to hide it anymore, and he says finally, "I'm here," and looks back, and Dean's face is—Sam can't look at him but he has to. He smiles a little and knows that it's a weak effort, because Dean huffs air, his jaw so hard he looks like he's going to pop a tendon.

He looks at Dean, instead of the thing. Twisted awkwardly at the waist. "You keep your bargains," he says. "I keep mine, too." Dean's eyes narrow, because Sam's voice did something he didn't mean it to, but he just—he had to see Dean's face, because he thinks he knows where this might be going.

"The water is you," he says. Turns finally, and sees the thing—closer, somehow. Somehow not. Like he's seeing it more clearly while the world around it gets stranger. The water laps against his calves. "When the planes slipped—when the cage broke open? Forests all over the world and in that other world, connecting to each other. You came from the woods and you—what. Poisoned everyone? No, that doesn't make sense. It was—an infection. Spreading with everything your water touched. So the people, in the town—" and he thinks for the first time, what the hell is the name of the town? "They didn't know what they were giving up. But they're protecting you, aren't they? It's why they forget."

A face, slipping onto its not-face. The wife, with her red hair, her tired eyes. "We protect each other," it says, and it's a female voice, a slight twang of New Jersey. "They forget, and they forget. I empty them. It is a blessing to be eroded into something smooth."

"They were all happy." Dean says it, slowly. Sam glances along his shoulder and sees Dean looking at the woman's face. "Right? The—the girl in the diner, and the guy at the b&b. Tiny town but they—" He shakes his head, but he's right, Sam realizes. Smooth. Unbothered by anything because they couldn't remember anything that had hurt them. And the strangers who came through—a woman, with a rude husband—a teenage boy, hitchhiking, when boys should be safe at home, and why was he out here, far from anything? What was it in them that needed to be smoothed by the water?

The boy's face surfaces. He's—young. Sixteen maybe, with light brown hair and blue eyes, and Sam can see clearly enough now that he sees the bruise, yellow-purple around the boy's mouth. His gut clenches. It would've been a hard hit, whatever it was. His mouth opens, and he says in a soft barely-deepened voice, "Sam, you have your own sorrows. Bargain with me."

"We have cold iron," he says, again. "Salt. We have magic. You might take me—" Dean makes a strangled sound— "—but you won't win, because he hasn't touched the water, and we have a friend in an angel, and a nephilim born of an archangel, and they may not be able to touch your plane but they can ruin your water. If not now then a week from now."

A pause. The boy's face flickers, smooths into blankness. Shifts into Sam's own face, again, and this time he—doesn't have eyes, just his own familiar nose and his hair and his mouth, quirked, and Dean says, _fuck_ , wounded, behind him, and a voice that's _almost_ like Sam's says, slowly, "You cannot kill me with iron alone, and the bargain stands. You have still touched the water."

Sam sighs. The fixation, somehow, despite the fear he's been holding back, is getting annoying. "I know," he says. He does. It's—inescapable. A numbness growing, in his legs, vying for supremacy over the pain. "But I'm not alone. I have leverage. Don't I."

Another brief strangled curse, from his brother. God, he wishes Dean were close enough to touch him. Maybe that wouldn't make it easier. He still wants it.

The half-copy of his face points at him, mouth a thin line. A pause, again, and then: "I offer freedom," he says. It says. They say, an echo building in the air. "I know your life. I flow in you. I can take it away." Sam frowns, glances again at Dean. That's not a deal. The voices build, like harmony. "There was Michael the archangel, and Lucifer the archangel, and Alastair the inquisitor, and Lilith the dealer, and Ruby the slave, and a darkness, and a mark, and a power that waited, in you, sullying your own waters that pump under your skin." Sam breathes, feels how it shakes a little. Weird listing, out of order. History laid out, just like that.

"We talked about this," Sam says. He thinks his voice doesn't shake. "You should know that. The pearl could have taken all that away and we chose to keep it. We don't want your freedom."

"But you do," the voices say. "There was a time, before the power. When you dawned new. He touched your face and your body became a different body, and your mind a different mind, and your soul—" A hesitation. "The soul rang. It was—Victory."

Kentucky. It's been rising up in Sam's mind, again and again. Only—he was the one who had touched Dean's face. The soul, he thinks, singular, and then he can't avoid looking at Dean anymore and sees that Dean's watching him, and he's—agony, would maybe be the word for it. But not just that because they're older than that, they've been through more than that. Twelve years since that night, and more if he counts what time passed in hell, and he imagines somehow—going back. A life where they were still themselves, still brothers, but where the pain—the real pain, the pain that had come later—never had to happen. A dream. He sees Dean thinking about it, too. He remembers how Dean's eyes had looked, that night, in that cabin. With Sam's hand on his jaw and a precipice there, that they were both teetering over. Details have blurred, over the intervening years, but he never forgot that. How Dean looked at him.

Dean's looking at him now. Pained but also warning, and also trusting, and other things, little flickers of familiarity. It's complicated. Like it's always been, between the two of them. He remembers Dean's eyes in the cabin but he also remembers the way Dean looked at him with his hands wet from the dishes, in their kitchen. Rejecting a pearl's offer because he wanted to be the man he was, no matter what it had cost. He wanted them both to be who they were. His face, then, in the bright of the kitchen, in the home they'd made. Saying more than his mouth did. Remembering it, Sam smiles at him, and that time it feels like it comes off a little better.

"No," he says. "We are who we are because of the parts that aren't—smooth. I don't want your bargain."

Do fairies get frustrated? Sam doesn't know. This thing is—different, to the ones they've met before. The dark wood looms at the corners of his eyes and his legs—god, they want to collapse, to send him to his knees in the lake. Probably a bad idea.

"You have already entered into the bargain," it says. The lake surges, lapping at his numb knees. He hopes to god Dean's far enough back—and he is, because Dean didn't touch the water willing. Somehow Sam knows that—that that's the difference. That he dipped his hand into the stream and the opening lines of the deal sealed themselves onto them, somehow. Unwilling, unknowing, but what was fairness, to something like this? Medieval kings killing starving peasants for poaching on royal lands. Terms and conditions, unread.

He's feeling strange. His head spins but he keeps his feet. "The town," he says. His throat, dry. He clears it. "The town. Stop—the infection. It isn't their deal to make. They don't know that they're using your waters. Let them have their names." A beat, while it stands still above the lake, pointing his own unsmiling mouth at him. He rolls his shoulders, frustrated, trying to focus. "I told you. We will salt your waters. Break the rocks above the waterfall. Shit, Dean will wait for the new moon and put C-4 laced with iron in that cave, and then hell if I know what'll happen. You're bargaining with me."

"I bargain for you," it says. Small correction. Sam breathes the warm, moist air. "The water stays in the woods. The people there are—left to their sorrows." The concession almost staggers him, but it's not done. "The stranger who enters the forest must make his own bargain."

Sam wants to protest. He imagines the hikers who might come through—stripping off their boots, bathing their feet. The half-moon, hanging overhead.

"I have your name," it says. "You have leverage. Yes. You refuse the freedom I offer in exchange for the pain of others. I have your name."

"Sam," Dean says.

It had him, he thinks. From that first stupid moment, when he touched the stream. From when he wanted to take Dean away, to a simple hunt in a simple forest. To just be with each other, like they hadn't been able to do in so long.

He closes his eyes, deliberately, and the forest spreads wide around him. The trees are close. He says, as quiet as he can, what he offers for his part of the bargain. It has his name, but Dean is there to protect his body. He will not be a wisp. He will not fill the plate. It has his name, and it can have what that means. It can give his freedom, but he will walk free from here.

"Yes," it says. He says.

"Sammy, what are you doing?" Dean says. He hefts the shotgun but Sam holds out his hand.

"We can't—" he says. He swallows. The face is empty. "I made a deal. I'm gonna be okay. I promise. We're going to go home."

The face is empty and it's waiting. They keep their bargains, Sam thinks, a weird hysterical edge to it that he almost physically clamps down on, so he won't waste it. All this because he touched a stream.

He looks at Dean. It hurts, to do it. He does it anyway. "Why Sam?" he says, to the fairy. "He called me Sammy, when we first came to the lake. Why not that name?"

Dean's mouth opens but it seems like he can't speak. His eyes glitter in the half-dark.

"That name is not yours," it says. "It is his."

Sam nods. True. The water, when it washes over him, feels like—nothing at all.

*

He sits at the table, in the kitchen. The bunker. Home. He knows it's his home because he's been told that it is.

There have been people. Castiel, Jack, Mary. They come to him and he knows them but they say his name and he doesn't recognize it. Castiel talked to him for hours, when they came back to the bunker, sitting across from him and holding his hand in a strange grip, asking questions. It was a waste of time. All of them boiled down to _do you remember_ , and he doesn't, or at least he doesn't remember what Castiel is asking of him. Jack sat nearby, on the edge of his seat like he wanted to spring up and run somewhere, fight something, but what? Castiel kept asking him, and he could say— _you're an angel. You saved Dean from hell. You tried to become a new god. You look after Jack._ All true, and Castiel and Jack looking at each other confirmed it, but when Castiel said, _And what about you? Do you remember where you were, when that happened?_ He could only shrug. He must have been somewhere. He doesn't know.

Mary talked to him for only ten minutes. He looked at her and felt—what did he feel? It was complicated. A sense of sadness for her. Knowing that she'd been dealt a hard hand. She'd died and come back to a dead husband, and a worried son. "Two," she said, wet in her eyes, and he'd paused and said, "Right, two," because he'd been told that, and she smiled and nodded at him and then, when she left his room, she cried, in the hall, close enough that he could hear. He felt bad but he'd told her what he thought was true.

In the kitchen things are—simpler. Food and beer, and whiskey stashed under the coffee maker. He's been reading John Winchester's journal, bound in a battered-soft pale leather, and he recognizes a lot of what's in it but it's hard to parse, sometimes. Stories of a hunt, for a witch or a banshee or a werewolf, and he knows what happened in each, but then John talks about—two sons. Two. He runs his fingers over the second name, three letters, and he should know it. He's been told, over and over, he should know it. It escapes him.

A line that keeps popping into his head. What's in a name? A rose—he thinks, but of course he isn't a rose. He's a man and he knows that, and he knows too that he's—capable. He can speak, he can read, he can take care of himself. He went to the shooting range at the back of the bunker and cored five targets. He knows on instinct, given a pile of reagents, how to put together a hex bag to hide himself from those who might look for him. Castiel frowned at him when he did that and to be contrary he recited the rituale romanum to banish a demon, and Jack said, "I don't get it, he's _right there_ ," and his eyes flared a little gold in a way that made the books in the room shiver on their shelves, but Castiel shook his head and said, "Let's let him rest, Jack," and they left, and he looked at his hands and thought, he is. He's right here.

It was explained to him. There'd been a deal. He'd been trapped, by a sidhe, one more powerful than they knew could come to this plane, and he'd made a bargain to save a town and lost himself, but only himself. He can name the capitals of all fifty states and disassemble a shotgun, but he's—when he thinks about—

"You're awake," he hears, and turns around, and it's—

"Dean," he says. Even to his own ears it sounds relieved.

Dean doesn't look like he's slept. Dean doesn't look like he's slept in a week. All these conversations, these tests, and Dean's been nearby but hasn't said much. He doesn't know why. In all of it, Dean's the only person he wanted to talk to. The only one that felt like he—mattered, in some essential way that he doesn't quite understand. He feels it. He doesn't have to understand it.

"Tell me you made coffee," Dean says, and he says, "I did," but Dean's already halfway to the pot, and he watches while Dean pours a mug and sips at it and grimaces and says, soft, "Still sucks, how do you manage that?" and he doesn't know what that means but his chest fills up, tightens, expands. Affection beyond words. He can picture this, a thousand mornings like this. Dean, with his hair mussed at the back in a little shotgun-blast, his robe hanging off his shoulders, his face shuttered and sour, his mug held right under his mouth so he can breathe the caffeine, without any interruption from the air.

"Did my best," he says, with a shrug.

Dean's eyes squeeze tight, the crow's feet going deep, and he lowers the mug and looks into it instead of at him. "Yeah," he says, and it sounds bitter. Bitter as the coffee, as the way Dean looks at him sometimes, for a fraction of a second before it shifts, shutters, hides away into anger, or worry, or—something else.

"Come sit," he says, beckoning, and Dean doesn't. He sighs. He stands, and Dean looks at him unsubtly, eyes flicking from his face to his chest to lower, and he feels the corner of his mouth turn up. He sits, instead, on the edge of the table with his legs straddling one of the low stools, and folds his arms over his chest. "Dean," he says, and Dean's eyes flicker when he says Dean's name. They always do. He doesn't know why but he does it, anyway, because the effect is—he likes the effect.

Dean's talked to him, too. Less than Castiel but enough. Most of it on that first day, the day he woke up on the shoreline of the lake at dawn. His back had hurt but he'd been warm, and he'd opened his eyes to the grey-pink morning washing over the sky, and Dean curled over his chest, holding him, his arms so tight it hurt. _Ow,_ he'd said, helpfully, his voice all rust, and Dean had made this awful cracked sound in his chest and lifted up, his face wet-stained, grabbed him by the jaw and fisted into his hair, said—his name—and he'd flinched at how Dean's fist pulled but he'd lifted a hand, touched his face. The wet cool stickiness, the fear-lines. He'd said, _Dean_ , and Dean had half-laughed and said _son of a bitch_ , and he'd said _guess you outsmarted him, huh?_ He'd looked so happy. He'd been relieved.

"Come here," he says, now. Asking, more than expecting. Dean tongues his cheek, the skin denting, and comes after too long. He stands too far away and it's another thing to sigh about, but he holds out a hand and Dean takes it, after a hesitation, and lets himself be pulled closer. He doesn't try for a hug because Dean stiffens at those, but Dean stands there, and lets his wrist be held, and lets himself be looked at.

It's not difficult, to look at Dean. It's all he wants to do, most days. When they came back to the bunker two weeks ago Dean put him in a room which Dean said was his own bedroom, and closed the door, and he was alone, for almost a full day. When night fell again he was hungry and he left, and he went to where he knew the kitchen was because he knew that Dean cooked there, and Dean was there, sitting on the floor behind the island with a forest of empty beer bottles at his side, and he'd crouched nearby and Dean had looked up and said—his name—and he'd touched Dean's ankle, and Dean had said, voice thick and accusing, _you said we didn't need it,_ and he'd said, _you said we were gonna come home._

Home. He holds Dean's wrist and feels it in the slow, even pulse, beating there. "I wish you slept better," he says, and Dean snorts and says, "Same here." He says, "You could sleep in my room," and Dean looks at him, with deep purple bruising under his eyes, and says, "We talked about that," but it wasn't much of a conversation.

He's been told the theory. That he holds the world in his mind but that there's a core, drilled through it, where he used to be. Dean submitted once, last week, to Castiel's questioning, and he talked about a hunt, a long time ago—a wendigo, on a wooded mountainside in Colorado. Castiel turned to him instead of Dean, and said, _do you remember_ like Castiel so often said, and he did. There was a girl, and her brothers. Dean saved the day. A flare gun and the wendigo went up in flames. He knew everything about it, and Dean groaned and said _but you were there, you were the one—you had the girl—_ and he—okay, so he doesn't remember that. He remembered Dean, on the mountain in the early light, his face unlined then, his lips full and his eyes clear. He remembered Dean's face, with a cut across his cheekbone, and his confidence through the hurt. He remembered what mattered.

 _It's not all that mattered_ , Dean said, last week, and he didn't come again, when Castiel was doing his questioning.

The theory. A person with a hollow, straight through the center. The sidhe couldn't take his body but it took everything else. It's bull. He's been trying and trying to explain, and no one seems to get it. His self—himself—he's right here. He's here, with his arms and his hands and standing on two feet, and his eyes seeing the world, and his mind perfectly functional behind them. He could go on a hunt today, if they'd let him.

Dean's looking at his chest. He says, quietly, "I'm not—I know I'm not—the same. As what you remember."

Dean says, "We don't need to do this again."

He says, because he knew that Dean was going to say that, "I remember _you_." Dean's eyes close. "Dean, come on. I remember you. That has to count, for something."

"Yeah?" Dean says. His wrist turns. "It has to?"

Danger lurking under it. He sighs and lets Dean's wrist go, and spreads his hands. "You all say I'm—not me. Maybe I'm not, I don't know. But I know who you are."

He's said it over and over. When Dean could hardly look at him, on the drive from Pennsylvania to Kansas. When he sat in the room that was apparently his and Dean said, pleading, _tell me you remember_ , and he—he did, he remembered, but whatever he remembered apparently wasn't enough.

Just like now. Dean shakes his head, again, drawing in. Drawing away.

It's untenable. "You're—" he says, and Dean frowns for a second, half-smile like he can't take another blow but knows he has to, and then looks at him. Green eyes and the lines around them. Intimately known, like he's been looking at them his whole life. "Dean. You're—you like extra onions, on your burger. You think Panthro is the coolest Thundercat. You cried so hard watching Field of Dreams that you almost threw up and Bobby threw the VHS tape in the trash. You hate dogs. You—" Dean's watching him now, and somehow looks like this hurts more, but he doesn't know how else to say it. "You hate feeling helpless more than anything else. You like to be touched," he says, and demonstrates. "Here."

His hand, soft, on the back of Dean's neck, and his thumb slotted in the soft, soft space behind his ear. Dean shudders, his eyes closing. "Sammy," he says, cracked, and—yes. Yes.

"I told you," he says, soft, and draws Dean in, and for the first time in two weeks Dean breathes out and leans in and—when they kiss, it's with Dean's hands buried in his hair, their mouths moving slow and chapped, Dean's lips warm and uncertain and his breath shaking, in his chest. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since the last time but it feels—like it’s all he’s wanted. Like his heart blooms open in his chest, and the world realigning to the right axis.

Dean pulls back. Dean would have to—he wouldn't, given a thousand hours just like this, with his ass getting sore against the hard edge of the table, with Dean's waist circled in his arms. "Sammy," he says, again, and it thrills in some deep place. A knowing, a being known. Dean strokes his hair back, shakes his head. "That stuff. It's not what—that's not enough."

He knows. "I know," he says, and he does. Dean's raw, hurting. Missing someone who he feels isn't here. "You're—" he says, and hesitates. "My brother," is what he says, and Dean's eyes sweep up, his pupils spread dark. Dean explained that that's what they were, and he supposes it must be true, but it's not the only thing that's true. He slips a hand under the robe, under the black t-shirt, to Dean's waist. He licks his lips and says what he knows. "Mine."

A soft breath, huffed. "You're pretty confident," Dean says. Ache in it. "Without knowing a damn thing about yourself."

"I know what matters," he says, again. Castiel and Jack are gone, to find some solution, they said. Mary's gone. The bunker's empty though he knows it used to be full. It's just them, and he knows that whatever came before—whatever he was before—this is what he wants, now. This is what's important. It's a solid base to himself, a certainty that goes to the deepest part. He keeps saying. He can't have been cored out because this is the core of everything.

Dean's been looking at him. "Sammy," he says, soft, again, and touches his mouth. Sammy's a good enough name, if he can't remember any other.

Whatever his past self might've been, whatever things might've come between them. There's Dean, and then there's everything else. "There's nothing I put in front of you," he says. Dean's eyes sharpen, looking back and forth between his. He shrugs. "Whatever happened, in the past. We're together. That's all that's ever mattered, isn't it? It's what matters to me."

It feels—right, to say it. He doesn't know why Dean's searching his face, so hard, but he doesn't mind being looked at, either. He touches that spot again, behind Dean's ear, and Dean's eyes tighten, and he holds Sam's shoulders.

"Wasn't supposed to go this way," Dean says. Like he's confessing something. "I thought—we'd come home, and we'd—I don't know. It was gonna be a new start."

"It can be," he offers, smiling easy enough that he hopes it doesn't hurt Dean more. "I'm pretty new."

"You're a bitch, is what you are," Dean says, rough-voiced, and he doesn't know why, doesn't know exactly what that means. He laughs a little, though, to hear Dean say it, and Dean makes this little choked noise in his throat and comes in closer and buries his face in his throat. _Sammy_ , he says, very quiet, and it's—good. Every moment, from whatever he can't remember to this, it's good. Whatever's missing will come back, or it won't. He's himself, and Dean's Dean, and he's good with who they both are. He cups the back of Dean's head and feels him solid, strong, something he can pin the world around. He can't go back, and undo what they say he did. The only way is forward.

"Hey, Sammy?" Dean says, wet.

He makes a small noise, stroking behind Dean's ear.

"If you could take me anywhere in the world, where'd we go?"

Random, distraction. Dean's warm, in his arms, and he doesn't mind the distraction. Cold outside and bland farmland Kansas all around. "Malibu," he says, without much thinking about it, and Dean grips his shoulder and then lifts up and kisses him, tears streaked down his face but also laughing, messy and wild, and he holds Dean close and doesn't get it, doesn't know what the joke is, but one day he will. He's certain.

**Author's Note:**

> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](https://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/629114802443354112/fic-what-comes-after-certainty)
> 
> Would appreciate any thoughts if you have them.


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